the last days of the kingdom of israel · 2018. 11. 29. · part iii: views from archaeology ron e....

The Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel

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Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fuumlr die alttestamentlicheWissenschaft

Herausgegeben von John Barton Reinhard G Kratz Nathan MacDonald Carol A Newsom and Markus Witte

Band 511



Edited by Shuichi Hasegawa Christoph Levin and Karen Radner


ISBN 978-3-11-056416-7e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-056660-4e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-056418-1ISSN 0934-2575

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames Hasegawa Shuichi 1971- editor | Levin Christoph 1950- editor | Radner Karen editorTitle The last days of the Kingdom of Israel edited by Shuichi Hasegawa Christoph Levin Karen RadnerDescription First edition | Berlin Boston Walter de Gruyter [2018] | Series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ISSN 0934-2575 Band 511Identifiers LCCN 2018023384 | ISBN 9783110564167Subjects LCSH Jews--History--953-586 BC | Assyria--History | Bible Old Testament--Criticism interpretation etc | Assyro-Babylonian literature--History and criticismClassification LCC DS1216 L37 2018 | DDC 93303--dc23 LC record available at httpslccnlocgov2018023384

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen NationalbibliothekThe Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografiedetailed bibliografic data are available on the Internet at httpdnbdnbde

copy 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH BerlinBostonDruck und Bindung CPI books GmbH Leck

wwwdegruytercom


Table of Contents

Shuichi HasegawaThe Last Days of the Northern Kingdom of Israel

Introducing the Proceedings of a Multi-Disciplinary Conference 1

Part I Setting the Scene

Bob BeckingHow to Encounter an Historical Problem

ldquo722ndash720 BCErdquo as a Case Study 17

Part II Approaching the Fall of Samaria from ContemporaryAssyrian and Egyptian Sources

Jamie NovotnyContextualizing the Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel What Can AssyrianOfficial Inscriptions Tell Us 35

Eckart FrahmSamaria Hamath and Assyriarsquos Conquests in the Levant in the Late 720sBCE

The Testimony of Sargon IIrsquos Inscriptions 55

Frederick Mario FalesWhy Israel

Reflections on Shalmaneser Vrsquos and Sargon IIrsquos Grand Strategy for theLevant 87

Karen RadnerThe ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo in the Context of the Resettlement Programme ofthe Assyrian Empire 101

Robert G MorkotThe End of the Kingdom of Israel A View from the Nile Valley 125

Part III Views from Archaeology

Ron E TappyThe Annals of Sargon II and the Archaeology of Samaria Rhetorical ClaimsEmpirical Evidence 147

Norma FranklinMegiddo and Jezreel Reflected in the Dying Embers of the Northern Kingdomof Israel 189

Part IV Working with the Book of Kings the Text

Timo TekoniemiBetween Two Differing Editions Some Notable Text-Critical Variants in2 Kings 17 211

Danrsquoel KahnThe Fall of Samaria an Analysis of the Biblical Sources 229

Christoph LevinIn Search of the Original Biblical Record of the Assyrian Conquest ofSamaria 251

Part V Working with the Book of Kings the ChronologicalFramework

Kristin Weingart2 Kings 15ndash 18 a Chronological Conundrum 267

Steven L McKenzieThe Last Days of Israel Chronological Considerations 289

Part VI Working with the Book of Kings the Narrative

Christian FrevelWicked Usurpers and the Doom of Samaria

Further Views on the Angle of 2 Kings 15ndash17 303

VI Table of Contents

Michael PietschHoshea ben Elah the Last King of Israel Narrative and History in 2 Kings171ndash6 335

Georg HentschelDid Hoshea of Israel Continue the Foreign Policy of HisPredecessors 355

Part VII Reflections in the Prophets

Martti NissinenThe Book of Hosea and the Last Days of the Northern Kingdom

The Methodological Problem 369

H G M WilliamsonIsaiah and the Fall of the Kingdom of Israel 383

Indices

1 General index 401

2 Words 411

3 Texts 413

Table of Contents VII

Shuichi Hasegawa

The Last Days of the Northern Kingdomof Israel

Introducing the Proceedings of a Multi-Disciplinary Conference

1 The Conference

The Northern Kingdom of Israel ruled the northern part of the Southern Levantfor about 200 years from the mid-tenth century to the late eighth century BCEThe kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian Empire after the latter had persis-tently conducted military campaigns into the Levant from the mid-ninth centuryBCE onwards

Despite considerable scholarly efforts over many years the events of the lastthree decades of the Northern Kingdom of Israel are still hidden beneath the veilof history A number of questions remain unresolved the status of the kingdomafter Tiglath-pileser III king of Assyria annexed its larger part in 732 BCE thedate of the conquest and the identity of the conqueror of Samaria the capitalof the kingdom the fate of Hoshea the Northern Kingdomrsquos last king or the cir-cumstances under which Samaria joined the anti-Assyrian coalition after its fallOne of the primary reasons for this situation lies in the discrepancies to be foundin the available textual sources namely the Hebrew Bible (chiefly Book of KingsIsaiah and Hosea) and the Assyrian material most importantly royal inscriptionsand letters from the state correspondence The gaps in the sources are not easy tobridge also because Bible Studies and Assyriology are separate disciplines withdistinct agendas and methodologies

In the period in question the Northern Kingdom played a significant rolewithin and beyond the Levant Elucidating its fall is not only critical for recon-structing the history of the kingdom itself but can also contribute greatly to ourunderstanding of biblical and ancient Near Eastern historiography for it is ex-tremely rare that the textual sources both of the conqueror and of the conqueredare at our disposal In addition the modern state of Israel is the most exhaustive-ly and most intensively excavated region in the Middle East and this provides uswith much relevant archaeological information To investigate the period inquestion is also meaningful in order to reconstruct Assyriarsquos diplomatic and mili-tary strategies toward its client kingdoms and its policies in its administrativeprovinces Our topic serves to elucidate the structure of imperial domination

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-001

of this first empire of the ancient Near East and to determine the difference in itstreatment between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom ofJudah which persisted as an Assyrian client state and was never integrated intothe Assyrian provincial system

To be in any position to attempt to reconstruct ldquowhat really happenedrdquo in thelast days of the Northern Kingdom one must first analyse all these sources crit-ically and independently and only then move on to synthesizing the resultsOnly in this way do we stand a chance to elucidate the background the courseand the results of the Syro-Ephraimite War and to determine the date of the fallof Samaria the identity of its conqueror and the aftermath of the conquest Thecritical analysis of the available sources was therefore the remit of the conferenceldquoThe Last Days of the Northern Kingdom of Israelrdquo whose proceedings consti-tute the present volume

The multi-disciplinary conference was organized by Shuichi Hasegawa (Rik-kyo University Tokyo) Christoph Levin and Karen Radner (both LMU Munich) inorder to elucidate ldquoThe Last Days of the Northern Kingdom of Israelrdquo and to ex-plore with fresh eyes key issues connected with the Fall of Samaria and its nar-rative that have fuelled scholarly debates since the 19th century It was held at thebuilding of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich from 15ndash 17 March2017 and brought together speakers from Finland Germany Israel Italy Japanthe Netherlands the United Kingdom and the United States It received generousfunding from a Fostering Joint International Research grant of the Japan Societyfor the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI Subject No 15KK0061) awarded to Ha-segawa with additional financial support provided by the Carl Friedrich von Sie-mens Stiftung and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation the latter throughthe Alexander von Humboldt chair in the Ancient History of the Near and MiddleEast held by Radner (who hosted Hasegawa at LMU Munich during the academicyear 201617) We wish to thank Denise Bolton for carefully proof-reading andwhere necessary language-editing the contributions to this volume Alexa Bar-telmus and Nikola Wenner for compiling the index and De Gruyterrsquos Sabina Dab-rowski Katrin Mittmann and Sophie Wagenhofer for their support care andspeed in preparing this publication

2 Introducing the Sources

It will be helpful to offer a short summary of the types and nature of the avail-able sources and to briefly highlight the problems relating to them I will use thefollowing categories (1) extra-biblical sources (2) biblical sources and (3) ar-chaeological data

2 Shuichi Hasegawa

21 Extra-Biblical Sources

Part II of this volume is devoted to this material which includes (1) Assyrian royalinscriptions (2) the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle (3) the Babylonian Chroniclesand (4) various Assyrian archival texts

211 Assyrian Royal Inscriptions

In the second half of the eighth century BCE the rulers of the Assyrian Empireconducted a number of military campaigns into the Levant and recorded ac-counts of these campaigns in their royal annals and other official inscriptionsThese mention information such as the names of the kings of the Northern King-dom their tribute and details of the Assyrian campaigns against the kingdomThe significance of these inscriptions lies in the fact that they were composedshortly after the time of the described events

Three monarchs ruled the Assyrian Empire during the last years of theNorthern Kingdom of Israel Tiglath-pileser III reigned between 745ndash727 BCEhis son and crown prince Shalmaneser V succeeded him and ruled from 727 to722 BCE when his brother Sargon II took the throne by force and reigned from722 to 705 BCEsup1

After a period of decline the ascent of Tiglath-pileser to the throne of Assyriamarked a new stage in the empirersquos history Dozens of his royal inscriptions sur-vive although most of them in a very fragmentary state of preservation Thiskingrsquos extensive military campaigns are recorded in annals that present hisdeeds in chronological order and in summary inscriptions that summarize hisactivities according to geographical considerationssup2

The Hebrew Bible refers to Tiglath-pileser quite often explicitly as well asindirectly (2Kgs 15ndash16 Isa 7 81ndash 10 23 109 171ndash3 Amos 62 1Chr 56 262Chr 2816ndash21) and this mirrors his profound influence on the history of theNorthern Kingdom These passages seemingly reflect the collective memoryand the developed tradition of this Assyrian ruler and his activities

Eg Albert Kirk Grayson ldquoAssyria Tiglath-pileser III to Sargon II (744ndash705 BC)rdquo in TheCambridge Ancient History Vol III2 second edition eds John Boardman I E S EdwardsE Sollberger and N G L Hammond (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1992) 71ndash 102 Rykle Borger and Hayim Tadmor ldquoZwei Beitraumlge zur alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft auf-grund der Inschriften Tiglathpilesers IIIrdquo ZAW 94 (1984) 244ndash51 Hayim Tadmor and ShigeoYamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (747ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V(726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) 106 17ndash19 132 10ndash 11

The Last Days of the Northern Kingdom of Israel 3

Very few royal inscriptions of Shalmaneser V the successor of Tiglath-piles-er III and especially no annals have survived The key information on his reign isknown from the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle and the Babylonian Chronicleswhich we will discuss below

Sargon II the successor of Shalmaneser V further expanded Assyriarsquos terri-tory by extensive military campaigning He states in his inscriptions that he con-quered Samaria and the Land of Humri as the Northern Kingdom of Israel isconventionally designated in the Assyrian royal inscriptions It seems that sever-al passages in the Hebrew Bible also refer to this Assyrian king (2Kgs 171ndash24181ndash 12 Isa 1027ndash32 144bndash21 201)

Considering the contemporariness of their composition to the events descri-bed the information found in the Assyrian royal inscriptions and especially theirchronological sequence is usually deemed reliable But the available inscriptionsrefer to the Northern Kingdom of Israel only in passing and thus do not provideadequate information for reconstructing this specific sequence of events In ad-dition the accounts are in no way unbiased as the royal inscriptions were pri-marily designed to convey Assyrian royal ideologysup3

212 The Assyrian Eponym Chronicle

The elaborate version of the Assyrian Eponym List dubbed the Assyrian EponymChronicle is another important historical source⁴ Since the late second millen-nium BCE limmu (or līmu) is the Assyrian designation for an official one-yearposition whose holder lends his name to the year in which he holds this officeWe therefore translate the term as ldquoeponymrdquo The Eponym List enumerates theholders of the limmu office in chronological order and the Eponym Chroniclesupplements this with information about key events affecting all of Assyria usu-ally just one per year Although the source is less biased than the inscriptions itoffers only limited information pertaining to the Northern Kingdom of Israel

Cf Shuichi Hasegawa ldquoAdad-nērārī IIIrsquos Fifth Year in the Sabarsquoa Stela HistoriographicalBackgroundrdquo RA 102 (2008) 89ndash98 id ldquoHistorical and Historiographical Notes on the Pazar-cık Stelardquo Akkadica 131 (2010) 1ndash9 Alan R Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-AssyrianText Corpus Project 1994)

4 Shuichi Hasegawa

213 The Babylonian Chronicles

The Babylonian Chronicles laconically record the key events in the history ofBabylon As several Assyrian kings including Tiglath-pileser III ShalmaneserV and intermittently Sargon II held the crown of Babylon the Chronicles some-times incorporate events pertaining to the Assyrian Empire including the men-tion of the conquest of Samaria under Shalmaneser V⁵

214 Assyrian Archival Texts

Samaria and its population are occasionally mentioned in Assyrian archivaltexts such as letters from the state correspondence administrative texts or pri-vate legal documents These sources usually date to the period after the conquestof the Northern Kingdom

22 Biblical Sources

Relevant source materials are included in (1) the Book of Kings and (2) the Booksof the Prophets

221 The Book of Kings 2Kgs 15ndash 18

The most detailed information on the final years of the Northern Kingdom de-rives from 2Kgs 15ndash 18 in the Hebrew Bible This source provides details suchas the names of the kings the year of their enthronement and the length oftheir reign major events circumstances of coups drsquoeacutetat and this is useful in cre-ating a basic chronological framework to reconstruct the history of the kingdomYet there are some problems in the biblical chronology that remain unsolvedPart V of this volume addresses the chronological framework of the Book ofKings

The text is mostly formulaic in style describing in brief the reigns of thekings of the Northern Kingdom It is generally assumed that parts of the accounts

Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (New York J J Augustin 1975)69ndash87 Jean-Jacques Glassner Chroniques meacutesopotamiennes (Paris Les belles lettres 1993)179ndash87


of a given kingrsquos reign go back to original archival records On the other handlater redactors are assumed to have added to this material and the resultanttext cannot be regarded as historically accurate To understand the nature ofthe text literary analysis is therefore indispensable The narrative art of theBook of Kings is investigated in Part VI of this volume

Most previous studies are based mainly on the Masoretic Text of the Book ofKings and failed to scrutinize the textual history of the Book of Kings But recentstudies demonstrate that the ancient Greek translations of the old Hebrew text ofthe Book of Kings such as the Antiochian text widely known as the Lucianic re-cension of the Septuagint sometimes preserve older readings⁶

The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible whose origins maygo back to the third century BCE The Antiochian text a revised version of an OldGreek translation of the Hebrew Bible survives in the form of manuscripts fromthe fourth century CE Yet the revision was unequivocally based on a text olderthan the oldest extant manuscripts of the Septuagint Thus the Antiochian textshould play an important role in reconstructing an older text of the Book ofKings Moreover it has recently been argued that the text of the Book of Kingsas preserved in the Vetus Latina a Latin translation of the Old Greek text ofthe Hebrew Bible is highly important as well although the extant manuscripttradition only partially provides the text of the Book of Kings⁷

The older text does not always corroborate the historical authenticity of theinformation that it contains If the text itself is a fiction regardless of its age his-torically accurate information cannot be expected in it On the other hand eventhough the text depends on an older source information included in the textcould have been altered by later editing For this reason it is imperative to recon-struct as old a text of the Book of Kings as possible before using it as historicalsource for reconstructing the last days of the Northern Kingdom Part IV of thisvolume concentrates on the various textual witnesses of the Book of Kings andthe reliability of the information they provide

For example see Shuichi Hasegawa ldquoThe Conquests of Hazael in 2 Kgs 1322 in the Antio-chian Textrdquo JBL 133 (2014) 61ndash76 Natalio Fernaacutendez Marcos ldquoDer antiochenische Text der griechischen Bibel in den Samuel-und Koumlnigsbuumlchern (1ndash4 Koumln LXX)rdquo in Im Brennpunkt Die Septuaginta Studien zur Entstehungund Bedeutung der Griechischen Bibel Band 2 ed Siegfried Kreuzer and Juumlrgen Peter Lesch(Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2004) 177ndash213 Alexander Fischer Der Text des Alten Testaments Neu-bearbeitung der Einfuumlhrung in die Biblia Hebraica von Ernst Wuumlrthwein (Tuumlbingen Deutsche Bi-belgesellschaft 2009) 138ndash42 Emmanuel Tov Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible Third Ed-ition Revised and Expanded (Minneapolis MN Fortress Press 2012) 146ndash47

6 Shuichi Hasegawa

222 The Books of the Prophets

There are other books in the Hebrew Bible that may contain important informa-tion on the last days of the Northern Kingdom Isa 7ndash8 refers to the Syro-Ephrai-mite War a conflict between the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the anti-Ju-daean league of the Northern Kingdom and Aram-Damascus which is alsorecorded in 2Kgs 16 In addition part of the Book of Hosea is sometimes assumedto allude to the situation on the eve of the fall of the Northern Kingdom

It is generally assumed that collections of the prophetsrsquo words or oral tradi-tions concerning their activities lie at the core of the books of the Prophets suchas Isaiah and Hosea Therefore in order to extract historical information fromthese books an approach is required that is different from that employed forthe analysis of the Book of Kings part of which is assumed to be derived fromarchival sources

Recently the difficulty in locating the original words of the prophets whichhad been assumed to be the nuclei in the prophetical books has been recog-nized since the prophetical books too have been subject to extensive editingAs a result the prophetical books are used less when discussing the propheticfigures in the time of the kingdoms and also as a historical source for recon-structing the history of the kingdoms⁸

On the other hand some scholars recently argued that with adequate cau-tion one can still extract historical information on the last days of the NorthernKingdom from the early prophecies in the Book of Hosea⁹ Regardless of the val-idity of this argument it reflects the view that the state of affairs as described inthe Book of Hosea corresponds to the historical situation ldquoat that timerdquo If soone must first aim to reconstruct the historical situation ldquoat that timerdquo on thebasis of other historical sources before judging the value of the Book of Hoseaas a historical source For this purpose one must build a rough historical frame-work based on these other sources and then examine whether or not the descrip-tion in the Book of Hosea fits in there

At any rate because of the process required to examine their historical reli-ability and due to the fact that they do not derive from archival sources the pro-phetical books can serve only as subsidiary sources for reconstructing the last

Ehud Ben-Zvi ldquoThe Concept of Prophetic Books and Its Historical Settingrdquo in The Productionof Prophecy Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud eds Diana V Edelman and Ehud BenZvi (London Routledge 2009) 73ndash95 Eg Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Source for the Last Days of the Kingdom ofIsraelrdquo BZ 59 (2015) 232ndash56


days of the Northern Kingdom of Israel The prophetical books and their histor-ical value for our topic are discussed in Part VIII of this volume

23 Archaeological Data

Excavations in the Southern Levant have been under way for more than150 years Recently archaeological information has been increasingly consultedfor reconstructing the history of ancient Israelsup1⁰ At many of the ruins of the citiesin the Northern Kingdom large-scale destruction layers have been detected thatallegedly date to the period of its conquest as they have been conventionally un-derstood as the results of Tiglath-pileser IIIrsquos military campaigns

Samaria the last capital of the Northern Kingdom was excavated twice firstin the beginning and then in the middle of the twentieth centurysup1sup1 In the 1990sthe results of the excavations were re-evaluated by Ron Tappy through extensiveanalysis of the original field notes and by adopting an updated methodologywhich offered a new archaeological basis for considering the conquest of Sama-riasup1sup2

Recent excavations for example those at Megiddo and Jezreel have alsoshed new light on the Assyrian administrative and economic strategy afterthese sites had been incorporated into the Empire Archaeological issues con-cerning the last days of the Northern Kingdom of Israel are discussed in PartIII of this volume

This problem is recently discussed in detail in Shuichi Hasegawa ldquoDavid and Goliath To-wards a Dialogue between Archaeology and Biblical Studiesrdquo in ldquoNow It Happened in ThoseDaysrdquo Studies in Biblical Assyrian and Other Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presentedto Mordechai Cogan on His 75th Birthday eds Shmuel Aḥituv Amitai Baruch-Unna IsraelEphʿal Tova Forti and Jeffrey H Tiggay (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2017) 607ndash22 George Andrew Reisner Clarence Stanley Fisher and D G Lyon Harvard Excavations at Sa-maria 1908ndash 1910 2 vols (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1924) John Winter Crowfootand Grace M Crowfoot Samaria-Sebaste 2 Early Ivories from Samaria (London Palestine Explo-ration Fund 1938) John Winter Crowfoot Kathleen Mary Kenyon and Eleazar Lipa Sukenik TheBuildings at Samaria (London Palestine Exploration Fund 1942) John Winter Crowfoot GraceM Crowfoot and Kathleen Mary Kenyon Samaria-Sebaste III The Objects (London Palestine Ex-ploration Fund 1957) Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria Volume I Early Iron Age through the NinthCentury BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 1992) id The Archaeology of Israelite SamariaVolume II The Eighth Century BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2001)

8 Shuichi Hasegawa

3 A Brief Synopsis of Previous Research

Although many books are devoted to the history of ancient Israel no single vol-ume comprehensively deals with the final years of the Northern Kingdom In thisshort overview of the history of research we shall concentrate on the two topicsthat have been the main focus of historical research on this period one is theSyro-Ephraimite War the other the exact date of the conquest of Samaria

Regarding the Syro-Ephraimite War Stuart A Irvine discussed the historicalsituation of the Southern Kingdom of Judah during this conflict in its interna-tional setting in a 1990 monograph based on the analysis of the Hebrew Bibleand the Assyrian royal inscriptionssup1sup3 According to Irvine Ahazrsquos request forhelp from Assyria as described in 2Kgs 16 is a dramatization by the Deuterono-mist and therefore cannot be regarded as historically factual Whether one ac-cepts Irvinersquos view or not his observation that the description in the Book ofKings does not reflect the historical event is reasonable

Irvinersquos primary interest lies in the historical circumstances of the prophe-cies in Isa 6ndash9 and how a prophet in the Hebrew Bible can be understood inrelation to kingship Hence although Irvine paid attention also to the NorthernKingdom his main focus rests on the situation in the Southern Kingdom The tra-ditional view of historical biblical scholarship that uncritically relies on the textin Isa 7 is to assume an anti-Assyrian alliance between Aram-Damascus and theNorthern Kingdom of Israelsup1⁴ According to this line of research the NorthernKingdom and Aram-Damascus allied in order to attack the Southern Kingdomof Judah which had refused to join the anti-Assyrian alliance with a view to re-place the Judahite king with a puppet ruler of their choosing who would join thealliance However no source other than Isa 7 attests to that purpose of the anti-

Stuart A Irvine Isaiah Ahaz and the Syro-Ephraimitic Crisis (Atlanta GA Scholars Press1990) Joachim Begrich ldquoDer syrisch-ephraimitische Krieg und seine weltpolitischen Zusam-menhaumlngerdquo ZDMG 83 (1929) 213ndash37 Bustenay Oded ldquoThe Historical Background of theSyro-Ephraimite War Re-Consideredrdquo CBQ 34 (1972) 153ndash65 Herbert Donner Geschichte desVolkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzuumlgen Teil 2 Von der Koumlnigszeit bis zu Alexanderdem Groβen mit einem Ausblick auf die Geschichte des Judentums bis Kochba 4th edition (Goumlttin-gen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1986) 337 Martin Noth Geschichte Israels 10th edition (Goumlttin-gen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1986) 235 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoForced Participation in Alliances inthe Course of the Assyrian Campaigns to the Westrdquo in Ah Assyriahellip Studies in Assyrian Historyand Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor ed Mordechai Cogan andIsrael Ephlsquoal (Jerusalem Magnes 1991) 80ndash98 esp 91ndash94 Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels(Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2016) 240


Assyrian alliance It is therefore requisite to examine once again the actions ofother kingdoms in the region as mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions inorder to gauge just how likely this hypothesis is

Turning to the conquest of Samaria Bob Becking has published a mono-graph on this topic in 1992sup1⁵ Using three sources namely 2Kgs the Assyrianroyal inscriptions and the Babylonian Chronicles Becking supported HugoWincklerrsquos and Hayim Tadmorrsquos view that Samaria was conquered twicesup1⁶ Hedated the first conquest to 723 BCE (Tadmor 722 BCE) and the second to720 BCE Becking also elucidated the deportation of people to the territorythat previously belonged to the Northern Kingdom as well as the deportationof the Israelites to other regions by using various Assyrian and Babylonian sour-ces His most recent views on the subject are presented in Part I of this volume

No single available source relates two consecutive conquests of Samaria Thetwo-conquest hypothesis was forwarded in order to explain the inconsistencyseen in the description of the conqueror of Samaria between 2Kgs 173ndash6189ndash 10 and the Babylonian Chronicles on the one hand and the Assyrianroyal inscriptions on the other hand The first two identify the conqueror as Shal-maneser V (727ndash722 BCE) whereas the inscriptions of Sargon II (722ndash705 BCE)describe the conquest of Samaria as a major achievement of this rulerrsquos earlyyears It seems significant that the Book of Kings and the Babylonian Chroniclesalthough different in viewpoint and language agree on the identity of the con-queror of Samaria and this has led to the formulation of the two-conquests hy-pothesis

On the other hand there are scholars who suggest that only one conquest ofSamaria took place Nadav Narsquoaman suggested that Samaria even if it was be-sieged by Shalmaneser V was conquered only once by Sargon II in 720 BCEsup1⁷S J Park tried to solve the above-mentioned problem by explaining that Sargon IIconquered Samaria under Shalmaneser V before his enthronement (722 BCE)sup1⁸

Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill1992) Hugo Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidung der Koumlnigsbuumlcherrdquo in id AlttestamentlicheUntersuchungen (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1892) 1ndash54 esp 15ndash20 Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns ofSargon II of Assur A Chronological-Historical Studyrdquo JCS 12 (1958) 33ndash40 Kyle Lawson Young-er Jr ldquoThe Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samariardquo Bib 71 (1990)206ndash25 Julian E Reade ldquoSargonrsquos Campaigns of 720 716 and 715 BC Evidence from theSculpturesrdquo JNES 35 (1076) 100ndash 101 M Christine Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Rea-son for Rejecting the Hypothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ 64 (2002) 59ndash77 Sung Jin Park ldquoA New Historical Reconstruction of the Fall of Samariardquo Bib 93 (2012)98ndash 106

10 Shuichi Hasegawa

Overall there is no scholarly consensus as to the date of the conquest and theconqueror of Samariasup1⁹

4 The Contributions Offered in the PresentVolume

Leading scholars from several disciplines contribute to the debate by presentingthe results of their research in this volume

With methodological reflections on his previous work Bob Becking attemptsto reconsider the fall of Samaria in a way that deliberately gives less priority tohighly biased textual sources such as the Hebrew Bible and the Assyrian royalinscriptions Based primarily on archaeological data Becking points out thatthe Assyrian Empirersquos interest in the conquest of the Southern Levant in the sec-ond half of the eighth century BCE was economically oriented rather than polit-ical

Based on the extant Assyrian royal inscriptions Jamie Novotny suggests thatmore information on the last days of the Northern Kingdom may once have beengiven in the ldquonow-lost sourcesrdquo of the three Assyrian monarchs Tiglath-pileserIII Shalmaneser V and Sargon II He concludes that especially inscriptions ofthe first two kings may well have contained more detailed information on thesubject of Samaria

Eckart Frahm presents new editions of eighteen passages from inscriptionsof Sargon II of Assyria that deal with the fall of Samaria He demonstrateshow misleading the information from Assyrian royal inscriptions can be attimes and highlights the resultant difficulty in reconstructing the history of thelast days of the Northern Kingdom Taking into account all the available dataFrahm reaches the provisional conclusion that Shalmaneser V was the Assyrianking who was solely responsible for the conquest of Samaria while the deporta-tion of its inhabitants took place under Sargon IIrsquos command

F Mario Fales while following Nadav Narsquoamanrsquos hypothesis of a single con-quest of Samaria explains the possible economic motivation (ldquogrand strategyrdquo)behind Assyriarsquos thrust into the Northern Kingdom such as better access to oliveoil and wine to the maritime trade of the Phoenicians to army horses and spe-

Cf John H Hayes and Jeffrey K Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samaria (730ndash720 BC)rdquo Bib 72(1991) 153ndash81 Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of SamariardquoCBQ 57 (1995) 52ndash64


cialized military professionals Fales regards the supposed three-year-siege of Sa-maria as non-real event

Karen Radner deals with the fate of its people after the fall of Samaria withinthe framework of the well-organized management of the populations of the vastlands under Assyrian rule A variety of contemporary Assyrian sources show thatSamarians with specific and specialized skill sets seemingly enjoyed compara-tively high status once resettled

Robert G Morkot summarizes the ongoing debates over the complicatedEgyptian chronology in the period of the last days of the Northern Kingdom Mor-kot suggests that the Northern Kingdom most probably had commercial and pos-sibly also close political relations with the Libyan rulers in the Delta rather thanwith the Kushite power in the south

Exploring the language of conquest in Sargon IIrsquos annals and the archaeo-logical record of the old excavations of Samaria Ron E Tappy points out theproblems in the excavatorsrsquo dating of Samariarsquos stratigraphical sequence Heconcludes that Samaria escaped wholesale destruction at the hands of the Assyr-ian forces

Based on updated archaeological information Norma Franklin reassessesthe function of Megiddo and Jezreel before and after the campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria to the region Well integrated into the Assyrian provincialsystem both continued to function as key military and administrative sites inthe region

Timo Tekoniemirsquos critical analysis of 2Kgs 17 demonstrates the significanceof text-critical study of the biblical text before using it as a historical sourceThere are a few instances in which the Old Greek text and the Masoretic textof the chapter do not agree and although most commentators have uncriticallygiven priority to the Masoretic text Tekoniemi argues that there are good reasonsto take the Old Greek Text more seriously into account

A close literary analysis of 2Kgs 173ndash6 and 189ndash 11 leads Danrsquoel Kahn topropose that the former is topically organized derived from an official Israelitesource while the latter is a late redactional insertion lacking any historically re-liable information

Christoph Levin likewise regards 2Kgs 189ndash11 as secondary but he findssecondary elements also in 2Kgs 173ndash4 which largely comprises later theologicalcomments Levin reconstructs the original record using 2Kgs 175ndash6 and 189ndash 11as a succinct account of Shalmaneser Vrsquos conquest of Samaria and his deporta-tion of its inhabitants to various places in the Assyrian Empire

Kristin Weingart challenges an old conundrum of biblical chronology in2Kgs 15ndash 18 Assuming the change of the New Year in the Northern Kingdomunder Assyrian influence during Menahemrsquos reign and identifying Jotham and

12 Shuichi Hasegawa

Ahaz as one and the same person Weingart provides an ingenious solution forthe difficulties encountered in the text

Steven L McKenzie discusses the same chronological issue Reconsideringthe merits and problems of previous scholarly suggestions McKenzie cannotfind an ultimate solution and regards the chronological data in 2Kgs 15 as ldquoun-usable for historical reconstructionrdquo

Analyzing the description of the kings of the Northern Kingdom in 2Kgs 15Christian Frevel draws attention to their negative portrayal which he sees as adeliberate strategy by the author Frevel warns against using the informationin the chapter for historical reconstructions

Basing his view on the analysis of the literary structure and the narrativepragmatic of 2Kgs 17 Michael Pietsch regards the text as a unit while he rejectsthe idea that the information given would have originated at the Northern courtFor him the complexity of the source allows us neither to reconstruct the courseof events nor to identify the Assyrian conqueror of Samaria

Georg Hentschel attempts to perceive in the descriptions in 2Kgs 15 and 17the change of foreign policy toward the Assyrian Empire during the last yearsof the Northern Kingdom and highlights how Assyriarsquos presence in the regionmight have exerted influence upon the chain of events that finally led the North-ern Kingdom to its fall

With a focus on methodological considerations Martti Nissinen discussesthe difficulty in gleaning historically reliable information from the Book ofHosea because of its later editing despite the fact that parts of the Book dateto the last days of the Northern Kingdom

Hugh G MWilliamson sifts through the Book of Isaiah to identify passagesthat possibly go back to the prophet who employs the terms ldquoEphraimrdquo ldquoSama-riardquo and once ldquoJacobrdquo for designating the Northern Kingdom Williamson de-fends the view that the concept of ldquoIsraelrdquo for the two nations must have existedeven before the Fall of Samaria as reflected in Isaiahrsquos usage of the term

With these papers our volume brings together leading scholars from differ-ent fields of research and for the first time all available data in order to discussthe problems concerning the last days of the Northern Kingdom from variousperspectives This will help I would hope to reach a better and deeper under-standing of this crucial period of Levantine history It is possible to argue thatit was these events that triggered the birth of a ldquoNew Israelrdquo in the SouthernKingdom of Judah in the following decades and that eventually led to the forma-tion of the Hebrew Bible and its underlying theology

Reader of this volume should keep in mind that although its contributorshave tackled the historical issues from different perspectives many are still in-conclusive and thus open for further discussion At times the conclusions of in-


dividual contributors are at odds with those reached by others As ever we canyearn for the discovery of additional sources that might resolve difficulties andachieve consensus But in the meantime I sincerely hope that the present vol-ume with its interdisciplinary approach will provide rich material for future re-search on the Northern Kingdom of Israel

Abbreviations in this volume follow The SBL Handbook of Style 2nd ed (At-lanta GA SBL Press 2014)

14 Shuichi Hasegawa


Bob Becking

How to Encounter an Historical Problem

ldquo722ndash720 BCErdquo as a Case Study

1 De ondergang van Samaria (1985)

In November 1985 I defended my doctoral thesis at Utrecht University I wrote mydissertation on the Assyrian conquest of the capital city of the Northern Kingdomof Israel from an historical as well as from an exegetical point of viewsup1 AlthoughI tried to escape the traditional way of history-writing as a narrative about kingsand battles I now see that I was too event-oriented and influenced by writtensources In other words I took texts especially the Hebrew Bible as a startingpoint for my investigation then looked for support in other pieces of evidenceAdditionally I was too focused on verifying isolated events Rethinking my ap-proach leads me to three questionsa What is a textb How does one properly encounter the pastc What about the histoire conjoncturelle

2 What is a Text

What is a text Or more specifically how does a text relate to an event The He-brew Bible is a text or better a collection of texts partly of a literary characterThis observation opens a whole line of questions There seems to be a dichotomyin the basic interpretation of texts Novels for instance are generally understoodto be fictional When Biblical texts are labelled as literary texts are they by im-

I would like to thank Shuichi Hasegawa for inviting me to the stimulating meeting in MunichI have learned much from all the other papers and from the fine and open discussion StevenMcKenzie and Ronald Tappy kindly provided some suggestions to improve my English while De-nise Bolton (Munich) language-edited the complete manuscript All remaining errors are ofcourse mine

Bob Becking De ondergang van Samaria Historische exegetische en theologische opmerkingenbij II Koningen 17 (Diss Utrecht Meppel Krips Repro 1985) the historical introduction was re-worked into English Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study(Leiden Brill 1992)

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-002

plication fictional And the other way around are non-fiction texts by implica-tion not literary I will try to elucidate this point with an example Many goodbooks on history are praised for their literary quality A good style and masteryof the language often leads to books that are both informative and a pleasure toread The question is how do such books relate to reality They certainly refer toevents that happened in real-time They are however not equal to the event(s)Such texts do relate to reality since they are descriptions of the events

In a comparable way Biblical texts ndash of whatever literary quality ndash should beconstrued as descriptions of (parts of) reality In fact they are to be understoodas interpretations of what might have happened Even when a Biblical text refersto an event that with great certainty can be classified in the category lsquodid reallyhappenrsquo the text does not equal the event It is ndash not unlike a restaurant bill ndash aselection of parts of the event presented from a specific point of view Texts in-form the reader about the view of the author on the pastsup2

As for the period of the last days of the Kingdom of Israel it should be keptin mind that neither the Biblical accountssup3 nor the Assyrian inscriptions⁴ equalthe event Both sets inform the reader about the view of their authors on the as-sumed events and give hints about those events

3 The Source as a Container of Evidence

This brings me to the following remark Texts are historical sources in the sameway that artefacts are There is however a problem This problem is connected tothe fact that texts are complex by nature They are built up in a way comparableto atoms In a text we can find particles and forces ie fermions and gluons⁵ Inthis metaphor the particles are the singular statements about the past ndash such asldquoSargon II conquered the city of Samariardquo The gluons in a text are the ideologyand the narrative structure that hold these particles together In other words a

See Chris Lorenz Konstruktion der Vergangenheit eine Einfuumlhrung in die Geschichtstheorie(WienKoumllnWeimar Boumlhlau 1997) 2Kgs 171ndash6 189ndash11 Cf the essays by Eckart Frahm and Jamie Novotny in this volume The material is presentedand discussed in eg Becking The Fall of Samaria 21ndash45 and Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoTheFall of Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 is incomplete due to pub-lication of new Assyrian texts See on these particles Toshiyuki Morii Chong-Sa Lim and Soumyendra N Mukherjee ThePhysics of the Standard Model and Beyond (Singapore World Scientific Publishing Company2004)

18 Bob Becking

distinction should be made between individual clauses ndash and their historical(im)possibility ndash and the narrative as a whole The narrative structure as awhole is the matrix that is created by the narrator or historian to convincethe reader of the truth of his or her view on the events It is for this reasonthat a historian has to deconstruct a given source in search of trustworthy par-ticles Only then can the Hebrew Bible be seen as a ldquosource of informationrdquo atthe level of its various particles but not at the level of the text as a whole

A warning should be taken from the philosophy of history of Robin G Col-lingwood⁶ Collingwood was looking for a way out of the dilemma between ldquore-alismrdquo and ldquoscepticismrdquo Realism is the position that the sources inform us in arealistic way about the past A sceptic is of the opinion that the past is inacces-sible By implication we do not have any real knowledge of the past Colling-wood tried to overcome this dilemma by elaborating a view on the characterof so-called historical sources These traces of the past are available and know-able in the present All the historian has in hand are the particles of evidencemirroring the past The evidence makes it possible to know the past but onlyin a restricted way The task of the historian is to collect as much evidence aspossible and then construct a personal image of the past In this re-enactmentmodels and imagination play a role The historian cannot do without metaphor-ical language to describe in an approximate and incomplete way the events mir-rored in the sources

In combining both these approaches to the character of written evidence Ihave come to the position that the Old Testament text should be treated primarilyas a collection of trace evidence The Old Testament supplies its readers with di-verse vestiges of the past that one way or another mirror the past These tracescan be (and have been) treated differently This difference is partly related to theideology of the historian ndash be it minimalistic or maximalistic or something inbetween Of greater importance however is the awareness of other traces of evi-dence and the matrix in which the historian ldquoreadsrdquo this variety of evidence⁷

Robin G Collingwood The Idea of History Revised Edition with Lectures 1926ndash 1928 (OxfordClarendon Press 1994) On Collingwoodrsquos historiography see now Dale Jacquette ldquoCollingwoodon Historical Authority and Historical Imaginationrdquo Journal of the Philosophy of History 3(2009) 55ndash78 and Jan van der Dussen History as a Science The Philosophy of R G Colling-wood (Dordrecht Springer 2012) Interesting remarks on this can be found in David Henige Historical Evidence and Argument(Madison WI University of Wisconsin Press 2005) Kimberly Anderson ldquoThe Footprint and theStepping Foot Archival Records Evidence and Timerdquo Archival Science 12 (2012) 1ndash23 and TimKenyon ldquoOral History and the Epistemology of Testimonyrdquo Social Epistemology 30 (2016)45ndash66

How to Encounter an Historical Problem 19

I will come back to this below In other words texts ndash as I see it now ndash are minorpieces of evidence disconnected footprints in the disturbed snow of the pastThey also contain ldquocluesrdquo references to the past that go beyond the direct con-text of the given piece of evidence and which inform in an indirect way about thepast⁸ These traces and clues however are wrapped in an often biased narrative

4 The Point of View as a Power Position

Texts are not neutral containers The focalization-theory of Geacuterard Genette ar-gues that the information in a text is always steered by the narrator⁹ The narra-tor makes the selection out of the available material and connects this selectioninto the order of the given text The reader is thus forced to look at the fable ndasha term for the basic narration that became text in a narrativesup1⁰ ndash the way the nar-rator wants the reader to look at it The narrator is like the hole in a shoeboxthrough which a diorama can be seen Hence the narrator of a text is in apower position and the reader is dependent on this sluice It is the narratorwho forces one to look at the ensemble of the narrative from his or her pointof view With regard to the Hebrew Bible this implies that historians should atleast be aware of the fact that information about the past is sluiced through aspecific point of view It is not neutral reports that are presented

In view of the written evidence concerning the Assyrian conquest of Sama-ria it should be noted that we are forced to look at the short narratives in theBook of Kings as well as the seemingly objective reports in the Assyrian royalinscriptions through a specific lens 2Kgs 171ndash6 and 189ndash 11 represent the

Carlo Ginzburg Clues Myths and the Historical Method (Baltimore MD Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press 1989 translated from the 1986 Italian publication) Geacuterard Genette ldquoDiscours du reacutecit essaie de meacutethoderdquo in id Figures III (Paris Eacutedition duSeuil 1972) id Nouveau discours du reacutecit (Paris Eacutedition du Seuil 1983) = id Narrative Dis-course Revisited (New York Cornell University Press 1989) see also Willem Bronzwaer ldquoIm-plied Author Extradiegetic Narrator and Public Reader Geacuterard Genettersquos NarratologicalModel and the Reading Version of Great Expectationsrdquo Neophilologus 621 (1978) 1ndash 18 MiekeBal ldquoThe Narrating and the Focalizing a Theory of the Agents in Narrativerdquo Style 17 (1983)234ndash69 Franccedilois Tolmie Narratology and Biblical Narratives a Practical Guide (Eugene ORWipf and Stock Publishers 1999) esp 29ndash38 Michael Hoey Textual Interaction an Introduc-tion to Written Discourse Analysis (LondonNew York Routledge 2001) This concept should not be confused with the fable as a form in folk literature such as thefables of Aesop or de la Fontaine

20 Bob Becking

view of the Deuteronomistic historian(s) on the pastsup1sup1 The pertinent inscriptionsof Sargon II reveal the view of the Assyrian court-writers and their royal ideolo-gysup1sup2 They are written to impress the populace especially those who visited theroyal palace as well as to account for the responsibilities of the Assyrian rulergiven to him by the Assyrian gods

Although deportations are referred to the effect that those events wouldhave had on the lives of ldquoordinary peoplerdquo is silenced both in the HebrewBible and the Assyrian inscriptions The reports on exile and deportation are nar-rated from the focus of temple and court

In sum it is possible to take written texts as the starting point for an histor-ical inquest In view of the remarks made it is better not to take these writtentexts as a starting point for finding the answer(s) of the historical problem(s)How then to proceed

5 A Five Dimensional Matrix

More than twenty years ago Manfred Weippert wrote a very interesting contribu-tion to ancient Israelite historiographysup1sup3 I agree with him that the historiographyof ancient Israel had arrived at a crossroads around 1990 and that it was impor-tant to take the right turnWeippert hinted at two methodological weaknesses inancient Israelite historiography

Firstly he argued that much of the traditional historiography is too ldquoevent-orientedrdquo Histories of ancient Israel focus on important events in the assumedhistory This implies that an important tendency in ldquogeneralrdquo historiography is

From the abundance of literature on the Deuteronomistic historian(s) I only refer to the syn-thesizing work by Thomas C Roumlmer The So-called Deuteronomistic History a Sociological His-torical and Literary Introduction (LondonNew York Continuum 2005) Much has been written on Mesopotamian royal ideology see recently Douglas J GreenldquoI Undertook Great Worksrdquo The Ideology of Domestic Achievements in West Semitic Royal Inscrip-tions (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2010) Linda T Darling A History of Social Justice and PoliticalPower in the Middle East The Circle of Justice from Mesopotamia to Globalization (LondonNewYork Routledge 2013) 15ndash31 Vladimir Sazonov ldquoSome Remarks Concerning the Developmentof the Theology of War in Ancient Mesopotamiardquo in The Religious Aspects of War in the AncientNear East Greece and Rome ed Krzysztof Ulanowski (Leiden Brill 2016) 23ndash50 David TRowlands ldquoImperial Ideology in the Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquo Teaching History 50 (2016) 4ndash7 Manfred Weippert ldquoGeschichte Israels am Scheidewegrdquo TRu 58 (1993) 71ndash 103 the article isin fact a lengthy review of Herbert Donner Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn inGrundzuumlgen (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1984) and its reprint in one volume in1987


passed by The French historiographical revolution known as the ldquoAnnalesSchoolrdquosup1⁴ is overlooked by almost all historians of ancient Israel This impliesthat there is seldom a window into daily lifeWeippert observed that the inclina-tion of historians of ancient Israel to focus on events often results in closing theways that would lead to an understanding of processes in ancient Israel at thelevel of longue dureacutee or even at the level of the histoire conjuncturellesup1⁵ Fortu-nately in the 20 years following this remarkable contribution we have seensome shifts in the fieldsup1⁶

SecondlyWeippert argues that scholars ndash especially biblical scholars ndash writ-ing a ldquoHistory of Israelrdquo too easily take the biblical narrative at face value anduse it as the backbone of their (re)construction

In order to overcome these weaknessesWeippert proposes approaching thepast through a set of five windows In his opinion the following five dimensionsneed to be explored (1) landscape (2) climate (3) archaeology (4) epigraphyand (5) biblical texts The past needs to be looked at through these five windowsand in the order givensup1⁷ On the basis of the evidence found a histoire conjunc-turellesup1⁸ can be designed In the next sections I will apply this approach in con-nection with the ldquoThe Last Days of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo

51 Landscape

A look at the landscape of ancient IsraelPalestine makes clear that this was ahilly area that contained various and differing zones The mountainous core ofJudah and Samaria was blessed with fertile soil However this core area as

A good introduction is to be found in Peter Burke The French Historical Revolution the An-nales School 1929ndash89 (Stanford CA Stanford University Press 1990) On this concept see Fernand Braudel ldquoHistoire et sciences sociales La longue dureacuteerdquo An-nales Histoire Sciences Sociales 13 (1958) 725ndash53 Important voices being Hans M Barstad History and the Hebrew Bible Studies in AncientIsraelite and Ancient near Eastern Historiography (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2008) Kurt LNoll Canaan and Israel in Antiquity a Textbook on History and Religion Second Edition (Lon-donNew York Bloomington 2013) 23ndash65 Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart Kohl-hammer 2015) 17ndash41 Lester L Grabbe Ancient Israel What Do We Know and How Do We Knowit (LondonNew York Bloomington 2017 rev ed) 3ndash38 This matrix is more fruitful than that proposed by Heather Gerow ldquoMethodology in AncientHistory Reconstructing the Fall of Samariardquo Constellations 2 (2010) no 1who operates with themodel to start by the Hebrew Bible and look for corroborations in other sources and findings On this concept see Braudel ldquoHistoire et Sciencesrsquo with critical remarks by Gerrit van RoonldquoHistorians and long wavesrdquo Futures 13 (1981) 383ndash88

22 Bob Becking

well as the surrounding semi-arid zones constantly required rainwater and atechnology to prevent run-off In other words the area had great agricultural po-tential but needed an intelligent cultivator The territory of the Northern Kingdomwas divided into various zones The presence of hills and mountains created apatchwork of semi-independent agricultural entities This element certainlyslowed the pace of nation-building after the collapse of the Bronze Age cultureThe Hebrew Bible describes the Northern Kingdom as a complex of ten differenttribes I will not argue for the historicity of this tradition but only note that thelandscape was ripe for regionalization These tribal areas might eventually haveunifiedsup1⁹ However the different identities might have survived for considerabletime Pride in onersquos tribal identity in addition or opposition to the overarchingnational identity probably endured until the Babylonian Exile The presence ofvarious tribal factions ndash and their different ambitions ndash might have negativelyaffected the alertness of the central organs of power an issue that could havecontributed to the internal weakness of the Northern Kingdom at the eve of de-structionsup2⁰

52 Climate

Having a semi-arid climate the territory of the Kingdom of Israel was stronglydependent on rainfall for its agriculture The way in which the populationcoped with this problem will be discussed in the next section The Iron Age Indash IIperiod coincided with a period of global cooling Climate in the Iron Age IIndash IIIperiod remained stable in ancient Israelsup2sup1 We can therefore assume that no spe-cific impulses from a (sudden) change in climate would have influenced thecourse of events leading to the end of the kingdom

On this process see Alexander H Joffe ldquoThe Rise of Secondary States in the Iron Age Le-vantrdquo JESHO 45 (2002) 425ndash67 This view for instance in an antagonism between lsquoGileaditesrsquo and lsquoManassitesrsquo as argued forby John Gray I amp II Kings (London SCM Press 1977 third ed) or William H Shea ldquoThe Date andSignificance of the Samaria Ostracardquo IEJ 27 (1977) 16ndash27 is difficult to test See eg Arie S IssarWater Shall Flow from the Rock Hydrology and Climate in the Landsof the Bible (BerlinNew York Springer 1990) Lester L Grabbe ldquoThe Kingdom of Israel fromOmri to the Fall of Samaria If We Only Had the Bible helliprdquo in Ahab Agonistes The Rise andFall of the Omri Dynasty ed Lester L Grabbe (LondonNew Tork TampT Clark 2007) 54ndash99


53 Archaeology

In my monograph on the Assyrian conquest I briefly discussed the archaeolog-ical evidencesup2sup2 As I now see it I was then much too focused on the military andadministrative aspects of events I scrutinized the archaeological evidence fortraces of destruction at a variety of sites as well as for traces of the administra-tive take-over by the Assyrians by looking at the construction of buildings thatcould be interpreted as Assyrian bureaucratic centers I now have quite a differ-ent set of questions with which to ldquoreadrdquo the archaeological evidence Firstlydoes the evidence support or challenge the assumption that the change in polit-ical power had little influence on rural communities in the territorysup2sup3 Secondlywhat happened in Samaria And thirdly what do we know about the Assyrianmilitary presence in the area

I will start with a side remark As a matter of fact in my earlier thesis I drewthe correct conclusion that the archaeological evidence was insufficient to solvethe chronological riddlesup2⁴

Regarding the first question the archaeological data from areas outside Sa-maria provides no evidence for the complete destruction or disruption of the Is-raelite countrysidesup2⁵ The fact that the agricultural terraces remained intact canbe seen as a clue to the Assyrian interest in maintaining food production Duringthe Iron Age II period some technological improvements in the system of terraceagriculture took place This system is a typical element of the longue dureacutee In theLevant the construction of terraces on hill slopes has very ancient (even pre-his-toric) rootssup2⁶ During the Early Bronze Age I period this terrace technique was

Becking The Fall of Samaria 56ndash60 A good starting point for this exercise is to be found in Magen Broshi and Israel FinkelsteinldquoThe Population of Palestine in Iron Age IIrdquo BASOR 287 (1992) 47ndash60 Becking The Fall of Samaria 56ndash60 See also Frevel Geschichte Israels 242ndash43 From the Natufian site Nahal Oren four architectural terraces are known that supported asettlement of about 13 hut-dwellings see Moshe Stekelis and Tamar Yizraeli ldquoExcavations atNahal Oren A Preliminary Reportrdquo IEJ 13 (1963) 1ndash 12 see also Ian Kuijt and Nigel Goring-Mor-ris ldquoForaging Farming and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Le-vant A Review and Synthesisrdquo Journal of World Prehistory 16 (2002) 361ndash440 Guy Bar-OzTamar Dayan Daniel Kaufman and Mina Weinstein-Evron ldquoThe Natufian Economy at el-WadTerrace with Special Reference to Gazelle Exploitation Patternsrdquo Journal of Archaeological Sci-ence 31 (2004) 217ndash31

24 Bob Becking

implemented on a larger scalesup2⁷ This technology helped to arrest the run-offwater making it useful for agricultural purposes Additionally the terrace sys-tem meant that more horizontal surfaces for agricultural use came into exis-tence which made the work for the cultivator much easier A system of terracesis also very helpful in avoiding erosionsup2⁸ The presence of a developed system ofagricultural terraces contains an important clue The system hints at an ad-vanced level of agricultural development Combining the terrace system withthe deployment of the iron-tipped ploughsup2⁹ farmers were able to produce morethan their local need This surplus was important as a reserve in times of droughtor crop failure On the other hand the surplus was also needed to pay off localelites in exchange for their protectionsup3⁰ In the territory of the Northern Kingdomthe technology of food production on terraces continued after the Assyrians tookover the capital city of Samaria

Moving to the city of Samaria itself a few remarks must be made Crowfootand Kenyonrsquos excavations brought to light various indications of demolition anddestruction Kenyon classified these traces as silent witnesses to a massive As-syrian conquest of the city In her view the overwhelming power of the Assyrianarmy overpowered the Israelite defence-lines by destroying great parts of the cityand its buildingssup3sup1 Stig Forsberg challenged this interpretation suggesting it wasbiased towards biblical traditions In his opinion the traces do not refer to a sin-gle eighth century destruction of the city but are witnesses to a variety of attackson the city from tribal conflicts within the Kingdom of Israel as well as from with-out from the Assyrians via the Scythians up to Roman times In his viewKathleen Kenyon telescoped evidence from a long time period into the short

See Nelson Glueck ldquoFurther Explorations in Eastern Palestinerdquo BASOR 86 (1942) 14ndash24Issar Water Shall Flow from the Rock 123ndash40 Pierre de Miroscheddji ldquoTel Yarmut 1992rdquoIEJ 42 (1992) 265ndash72 See eg David C Hopkins The Highlands of Canaan Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age(Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press 1985) 173ndash86 Hendrik J Bruins M Evenari and U NesslerldquoRainwater-Harvesting for Food Production in Arid Zonesrdquo Applied Geography 6 (1986) 13ndash32Karl W Butzer ldquoEnvironmental History in the Mediterranean World Cross-Disciplinary Investi-gation of Cause-and-Effect for Degradation and Soil Erosionrdquo Journal of Archaeological Sci-ence 32 (2005) 1773ndash800 See Hopkins The Highlands of Canaan 217ndash23 On the development of agriculture see Patrick Nolan and Gerhard Lenski Human Societies(Boulder AZ Paradigm 2004) See eg John W Crowfoot Grace M Crowfoot and Kathleen M Kenyon The Objects fromSamaria (London Palestine Exploration Fund 1957) Kathleen M Kenyon Royal Cities of theOld Testament (New York Schocken 1971)


time slot of the last days of the Kingdom of Israelsup3sup2 Ron Tappy too referred tothe methodological weaknesses in Kenyonrsquos reconstruction According to himKenyonrsquos work suffers from the lack of a clear stratigraphy ndash an argument thatparallels Forsbergrsquos Kenyonrsquos documentation of the find spots of the evidenceis ndash in Tappyrsquos view ndash sloppy and loose If I understand him correctly someof the traces can be connected to the Assyrian assault The city however wasnot completely devastated The presence of Israelite-Assyrian pottery indicatesthat the tell remained occupiedsup3sup3

There are a few archaeological clues about the Assyrian military presence inthe area Fantalkin and Tal have re-examined the remains of a fortress at Tell Qu-dadi (Tell esh-Shuna) located on the northern bank of the mouth of the YarkonRiver Their analysis of the ceramic assemblage made clear that the site was onlyestablished in the second half of the eighth century BCE They argue that thisstronghold should not be interpreted as an Israelite defensive fortress but asan Assyrian establishment that secured Assyrian trade along the via marissup3⁴This would indicate that the Assyrian interest was more focused on tradealong the Mediterranean coast than it was on the agricultural potential of thehill country In addition Finkelstein convincingly argued that the tower excavat-ed by Albright and Lapp at Tell el-Fulsup3⁵ was first constructed in the Iron IIC pe-riod as an Assyrian watchtower commanding the northern approach to Jerusa-lemsup3⁶ This military structure needs to be construed as a defensive measure

Stig Forsberg Near Eastern Destruction Datings as Sources for Greek and Near Eastern IronAge Chronology Archaeological and Historical Studies The cases of Samaria (722 BC) and Tarsus(696 BC) (Uppsala Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 1995) esp 25ndash36 Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria Volume II The Eighth Century BCE (Wi-nona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2001) 351ndash441 id ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samaria Toward aDialogue between Texts and Archaeologyrdquo in Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeol-ogy and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie White Craw-ford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jerusalem W F Albright Institute of Archaeological ResearchIsraelExploration Society 2007) 258ndash79 Note that Israel Finkelstein The Forgotten Kingdom The Ar-chaeology and History of Northern Israel (Atlanta GA SBL Press 2013) does not refer to thisquestion or the work of Tappy Alexander Fantalkin and Oren Tal ldquoRe-Discovering the Iron Age Fortress at Tell Qudadi inthe Context of Neo-Assyrian Imperialistic Policiesrdquo PEQ 141 (2009) 188ndash206 see also YifatThareani ldquoThe Empire and the ldquoUpper Seardquo Assyrian Control Strategies along the Southern Le-vantine Coastrdquo BASOR 375 (2016) 77ndash 102 See Nancy L Lapp ldquoCasemate Walls in Palestine and the Late Iron II Casemate at Tell el-Ful(Gibeah)rdquo BASOR 223 (1976) 25ndash42 Israel Finkelstein ldquoTell el-Ful Revisited The Assyrian and Hellenistic Periods (With a NewIdentification)rdquo PEQ 143 (2011) 106ndash 18

26 Bob Becking

against a possible attack from Judah In a different way the Tell el-Ful towerserved the Assyrian interests in the area of the former Kingdom of Israel

An interesting remark has been made by a group of osteo-archaeologists Ac-cording to them human remains dating from the Iron Age IIB period Levant ndashwhen the Assyrian Empire was at its height ndash only rarely manifest trauma tothe skull left forearm vertebrae and ribs The few existing examples could beinterpreted as referring to war-time circumstances The great majority of intactskeletons hint that the Assyrians were not as cruel and unrelenting towardstheir enemies as is often supposed by traditionsup3⁷

In sum the Assyrian take-over was less brutal than often imagined The evi-dence hints that the Assyrians wanted to rule over the territory in order to safe-guard their economic interests such as the trade route along the coast and theremittance of the agricultural surplus

54 Epigraphy

There are no paleo-Hebrew inscriptions that can directly be connected to the As-syrian conquest of Samaria Unfortunately there is no counterpart to the Lachishostraca that describe the fear that arose in this Judaean stronghold during thecampaign of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem in the early sixth centuryBCEsup3⁸ Fortunately we have some material to work with The Samaria ostracadocument the delivery of wine and oil from various districts to the court in Sa-maria around the middle of the eighth century BCE sup3⁹ The absence of compara-

H Cohen V Slon A Barash H May B Medlej and I Hershkovitz ldquoAssyrian Attitude To-wards Captive Enemies a 2700-Year-Old Paleo-Forensic Studyrdquo International Journal of Osteoar-chaeology 23 (2013) 265ndash80 Susan G Sheridan ldquoBioarchaeology in the Ancient Near EastChallenges and Future Directions for the Southern Levantrdquo American Journal of Physical Anthro-pology 162 (2017) 110ndash52 Lak (6)11ndash21 editio princeps Harry Torczyner Lachish I The Lachish Letters (LondonNewYork Oxford University Press 1938) Sam (8)11ndash 102 see Shea ldquoThe Date and Significance of the Samaria Ostracardquo On the ad-ministration and the commodities see Baruch Rosen ldquoWine and Oil Allocations in the SamariaOstracardquo TA 1314 (1986ndash87) 39ndash45 Meindert Dijkstra ldquoChronological Problems of the EighthCentury BCE a New Proposal for Dating the Samaria Ostracardquo in Past Present Future The Deu-teronomistic History and the Prophets ed Johannes C de Moor and Harry F van Rooy (LeidenBrill 2000) 76ndash87 Avraham Faust ldquoHousehold Economies in the Kingdoms of Israel andJudahrdquo in Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond ed Assaf Yasur-Landau JennieR Ebeling and Laura B Mazow (Leiden Brill 2011) 255ndash74 Matthew J Suriano ldquoWine Ship-ments to Samaria from Royal Vineyardsrdquo Tel Aviv 43 (2016) 99ndash 110 on the archaeological con-


ble documents from the period after the Assyrian conquest of the capital citydoes not indicate a break in the production of oil and wine in the area Wecan only assume that the Assyrian administration found other ways of recordingthese deliveries

Epigraphic evidence indicates that the exiled Israelites were carried awayto till the fields in Assyria and that some of them were incorporated into the As-syrian army⁴⁰ According to the documents at least a part of these exiles lived inrestricted freedom Some were accepted as witnesses in various contracts Infor-mation about their religion is absent except for the fact that many of them hadnames with a Yahwistic-theophoric element⁴sup1 Neo-Assyrian inscriptions foundin the territory of the former Northern Kingdom ndash fragmentary and rare asthey are ndash indicate that the lsquonewcomersrsquo ie those exiled from Neo-Babylonianterritories who were conquered by the Assyrians had mingled with the localpopulation⁴sup2

Royal inscriptions reporting the Assyrian conquest of Samaria supply re-stricted and biased information on the past This does not imply that they areof no value for the historian They should however be taken for what theyare expressions of a royal discourse larded with some details that could be cor-rect⁴sup3

55 Hebrew Bible

I will not discuss or summarize the debate on the value of the Hebrew Bible forthe reconstruction of the past The interested reader is referred to the very infor-

text of the find of the ostraca see Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of the Ostraca House at IsraeliteSamaria Epigraphic Discoveries in Complicated Contexts (Boston MA American Schools of Ori-ental Research 2016) See Ran Zadok ldquoIsraelites and Judaeans in the Neo-Assyrian Documentation (732ndash602 BCE)An Overview of the Sources and a Socio-Historical Assessmentrdquo BASOR 374 (2015) 159ndash89 andRadnerrsquos chapter in this volume For a survey see Becking The Fall of Samaria 61ndash93 with Zadok ldquoIsraelites and Judaeansrdquoand Josette Elayi Sargon II King of Assyria (Atlanta GA SBL Press 2017) 50ndash51 See Becking The Fall of Samaria 94ndash118 see also Karel van der Toorn ldquoCuneiform Docu-ments from Syria-Palestine Texts Scribes and Schoolsrdquo ZDPV 116 (2000) 97ndash 113 Wayne Hor-owitz Takayoshi Oshima and Seth Sanders ldquoA Bibliographical List of Cuneiform Inscriptionsfrom Canaan PalestinePhilistia and the Land of Israelrdquo JAOS 122 (2002) 753ndash66 The inscriptions are discussed in Becking The Fall of Samaria 21ndash45 On Sargon II see nowalso Sarah C Melville The Campaigns of Sargon II King of Assyria 721ndash705 BC (Norman OKUniversity of Oklahoma Press 2016) 21ndash55 and Elayi Sargon II

28 Bob Becking

mative book by Brad Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore⁴⁴ As for the reports in theHebrew Bible on the last days of the Kingdom of Israel scholars hold differentpositions on the provenance of these textual units and their date of compositionI will not try to summarize that discussion or argue for a specific position⁴⁵These textual units can be read in two ways

Firstly reading the texts from a factual perspective it is clear that 2Kgs171ndash6 and 189ndash 11 offer a set of propositions about the event1 Hoshea the last king of the Northern Kingdom rebelled against his Assyrian

overlord2 Hoshea unavailingly looked for support in Egypt3 Shalmaneser (V) king of Assyria conquered the city of Samaria4 Inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom were carried away in exile to a set of

localities controlled by the Assyrian Empire

These propositions can be rephrased as hypotheses about the past It is howev-er impossible to verify their implied claims In case it turns out that they are allcorrect it should be noted that they can only be interpreted as supplying a skel-eton without flesh of the events They only supply surface information on thecourse of events The impact of the event on the life of (ordinary) people isnot narrated

Secondly the Book of Kings offers a view on the reasons for the Assyrianconquest from a perspective comparable to that of the longue dureacutee but quitedifferent from the Annales-perspective The religious ideology of authors presentsthe fall of Samaria as the result of divine wrath triggered by the illicit conduct ofthe kings and inhabitants of Israel⁴⁶ This explanation will not convince the mod-ern post-modern or post-post-modern historian It indicates however that theBiblical writers did look at the event from a broader perspective

Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E Kelle Biblical History and Israelrsquos Past The Changing Studyof the Bible and History (Grand Rapids MICambridge Eerdmans 2011) See Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 477ndash79 the various commentaries on the Book of Kingsand the chapters by Levin McKenzie and Tekoniemi in this volume See my analysis of 2Kgs 177ndash20 and 21ndash23 in Bob Becking From David to Gedaliah the Bookof Kings as Story and History (Fribourg Universitaumltsverlag amp Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck und Ru-precht 2007) 88ndash122


6 The Two-Conquests Theory

Previously I have defended the ldquotwo-conquests theoryrdquo⁴⁷ This idea was first for-mulated by Hugo Winckler⁴⁸ and later elaborated by Hayim Tadmor⁴⁹ This theo-ry reconciles the claims by two Assyrian kings to have conquered Samaria BothShalmaneser V and Sargon II are described as conqueror of the capital of theKingdom of Israel In the Babylonian Chronicle it is said that Shalmaneser ldquode-stroyed Samariardquo (urušaacute-ma-ra-rsquo-in iḫ-te-pi)⁵⁰ In the royal inscriptions narratingthe deeds of Sargon II this king is presented as the one who ldquobesieged and con-quered Samerinardquo (urusa-me-ri-na al-me ak-šud) over half a dozen times⁵sup1 In myopinion the chronological riddle can best be solved by assuming a twofold As-syrian take-over firstly by Shalmaneser V and after the premature death of thisking by his successor Sargon II⁵sup2

The re-reading of the archaeological evidence however prompts me to re-phrase the theory The relatively scarce evidence for demolition both in Samariaand in the countryside urges one to rethink the character of the language in theAssyrian inscriptions With Ron Tappy I am now convinced that the tough lan-guage in these inscriptions is primarily hyperbolic⁵sup3 The martial expression ofconquest and demolition functioned to impress the audience at home in Assyria

Becking Fall of Samaria 21ndash45 Hugo Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1892) 15ndash20 Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur a Chronological-Historical StudyrdquoJCS 12 (1958) 22ndash40 77ndash100 Tadmor does not refer to Winckler however Babylonian Chronicle I i 28 see A Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (LocustValley NY Augustin 1975) 69ndash87 Tadmor ldquoCampaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 39 Becking Fall of Sama-ria 22ndash25 Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 464ndash8 Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoDid Shalmaneser V Con-quer the City of Samaria An Investigation into the maba-sign in Chronicle 1rdquo Or 80 (2011)423ndash38 Ariel M Bagg Die Assyrer und das Westland Studien zur historischen Geographie undHerrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1 Jt vuZ (Leuven Peeters 2011) 227ndash28 Grabbe AncientIsrael 171 Elayi Sargon II 46ndash47 Thus the Khorsabad Display Inscription i 23 In other texts the wording differs but alwayshas a military flavour This view is accepted by a majority of scholars see eg Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe HistoricalBackground to the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)rdquo Bib (1990) 206ndash25 Tappy Archaeology ofIsraelite Samaria Volume II 558ndash75 Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo Grabbe Ancient Israel192 Elayi Sargon II 48ndash50 M Christine Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Reason for Re-jecting the Hypothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ 64 (2002) 59ndash77 Sung Jin Park ldquoA New Histor-ical Reconstruction of the Fall of Samariardquo Bib 93 (2012) 98ndash106 unconvincingly arguedagainst this view taking their starting point in the Biblical narrative see Frevel Geschichte Isra-els 242 Tappy ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samariardquo

30 Bob Becking

These sources are not reliable descriptions of the event(s) Although I do notthink that the Assyrian takeover of Samaria was a completely peaceful actionI am of the opinion that the aim of the Assyrians was to gain control over thearea with as little damage to it as possible in order to be able to gather asmuch in taxes as possible ndash in the form of food products ndash and to secure theirtrade interests along the via maris⁵⁴ The character of this control can best be la-belled with a term from colonial studies ldquodominance without hegemonyrdquo⁵⁵ TheAssyrians dominated the trade and were the receivers of the agricultural surplusbut their power structure did not influence the area in its remoter parts

7 Event and Waves of History histoireconjuncturelle

Archaeology and climate studies are of great importance for the construction ofprocesses of longue dureacutee in an area The picture that emerges from this type ofanalysis is that of Ancient⁵⁶ Israel as an agricultural society that slowly devel-oped from a loosely connected network of self-supplying communities into amore closely knit network in which trade and surplus production became in-creasingly important to supply the needs of court temple and later the foreignsuzerain⁵⁷

At the level of the histoire conjuncturelle it must be noted that Samaria fellprey to the Neo-Assyrian expansion This expansion had its own internal mech-anism and almost inevitable necessity The will to govern over regions beyondthe border of the Assyrian homeland necessitated building a strong army TheAssyrian armed forces and their campaigns needed to be financed This financialpressure in combination with the growing need for luxury in and around thecourt (including food to feed the otherwise unproductive court officials) wasbasic to the Neo-Assyrian system of raising tribute from conquered areas⁵⁸ Avra-

See Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 481 See Ranajit Guha Dominance without Hegemony History and Power in Colonial India (Cam-bridge MA Harvard University Press 1997) Bagg Die Assyrer und das Westland 301ndash308 Or lsquoAncientrsquo Israel Iron Age Israel Palestine Southern Levant See eg Paula McNutt Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel (Louisville KY Westmin-ster John Knox Press 1999) See eg Juumlrgen Baumlr Der assyrische Tribut und seine Darstellung eine Untersuchung zur im-perialen Ideologie im neuassyrischen Reich (Neukirchen-Vluyn Neukirchener Verlag 1996)Karen Radner ldquoAbgaben an den Koumlnig von Assyrien aus dem In- und Auslandrdquo in Geschenkeund Steuern Zoumllle und Tribute Antike Abgabenformen in Anspruch und Wirklichkeit ed Hilmar


ham Faust has elaborated this view by analysing the Assyrian demand for oliveoil to be supplied from the Ekron area⁵⁹ Supported by an incomparably strongmilitary technology⁶⁰ this fly-wheel raged through the world of the Iron Age IIperiod When this almost unstoppable military machine reached the territoryof the Northern Kingdom of Israel it was only a matter of time till conquest ofSamaria took place I will not argue that the Assyrian take-over of Samariawas an inevitable fact that had to take place History is too much an open proc-ess for such a claim⁶sup1 In hindsight however the end of the Kingdom of Israelseems an appropriate outcome of the political-military game of those days Itis only against the background of this histoire conjuncturelle that the Biblical re-port on this event makes sense

In sum and by way of re-enactment1 Event The inhabitants of the city of Samaria had to bow to the military su-

periority of the Assyrians The death of Shalmaneser V and subsequent dip-lomatic intrigue only led to the delay of the seemingly inevitable After thestruggle parts of the population were deported and new settlers came in

2 Wave The military conquest might not have been inevitable but in view ofthe machinery of Assyrian expansion politics this was an understandableoutcome

3 Longue dureacutee The area maintained its agricultural function Food produc-tion was the basis of its economy The agricultural surplus now had to begiven to foreigners who ruled the area although they were far away

Klinkott Sabine Kubisch and Renate Muumlller-Wollermann (Leiden Brill 2007) 213ndash30 Peter RBedford ldquoThe Assyrian Empirerdquo in The Dynamics of Ancient Empires State Power from Assyriato Byzantium ed Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)30ndash65 Avraham Faust ldquoThe Interests of the Assyrian Empire in the West Olive Oil Production as aTest-Caserdquo JESHO 54 (2011) 62ndash86 See eg Walter Mayer Politik und Kriegskunst der Assyrer (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 1995) There are no such things as lsquolaws of historyrsquo which make events inevitable and necessaryand by which the outcome of a process can be calculated pace Graeme D Snooks The Lawsof History (LondonNew York Routledge 2002)

32 Bob Becking

Part II Approaching the Fall of Samaria fromContemporary Assyrian and EgyptianSources

Jamie Novotny

Contextualizing the Last Days ofthe Kingdom of IsraelWhat Can Assyrian Official InscriptionsTell Us

1 Introduction

Considerable scholarly effort has been made trying to lift the heavy veil shroud-ing the details of the history of the final two decades of the kingdom of Israelincluding the identity of the Assyrian ruler who conquered its capital Samariaand captured its last king Hoshea Because there are significant discrepanciesin extant primary sources in particular between the Old Testament and Assyrianinscriptions scholars have yet to satisfactorily answer the most important ques-tions about this crucial period in the history of the Levant Assyrian sources es-pecially royal inscriptions may provide some key pieces to the puzzle but whatcan they tell us about the last twenty to thirty years of the kingdom of Israel thefall of Samaria and the fate of Hosheasup1 This paper will examine the availableinscriptions of the eighth- and seventh-century Assyrian kings in order to eluci-

Support for my research on Assyrian (and Babylonian) inscriptions is provided by the Alexandervon Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Professor-ship for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumln-chen (Historisches Seminar ndash Abteilung Alte Geschichte) I would like to thank Karen Radner forreading through and commenting on a draft of this manuscript Her time and care are greatlyappreciated Any errors or omissions are solely my responsibility Because this conference vol-ume contains numerous topic-specific studies on the last days of Israel and because this chap-ter is to serve as an introduction to Part I of the proceedings footnotes and bibliography arekept to a minimum For the Assyrian material see the chapters by Eckart Frahm and Karen Rad-ner All dates are BC(E) except of course in bibliographical references

For (general) studies on royal inscriptions see in particular Albert Kirk Grayson ldquoAssyria andBabyloniardquo Or NS 49 (1980) 140ndash93 Johannes Renger ldquoKoumlnigsinschriften B Akkadischrdquo inRlA vol 61ndash2 ed Dietz Otto Edzard (Berlin de Gruyter 1980) 65ndash77 (especially 71ndash77)Hayim Tadmor ldquoPropaganda Literature Historiography Cracking the Code of the AssyrianRoyal Inscriptionsrdquo Assyria 1995 Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-As-syrian Text Corpus Project ed Simo Parpola and Robert MWhiting (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian TextCorpus Project 1997) 325ndash38 and Frederick Mario Fales ldquoAssyrian Royal Inscriptions NewerHorizonsrdquo SAAB 13 (1999ndash2001) 115ndash44

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-003

date what information that genre of Akkadian text can and cannot provide withregard to the history of Israel Special attention will be given to potential lostsources to determine if new Assyrian texts could really help scholars solvesome of the mysteries of the Bible

This paper will serve as a general introduction to the more topic-specific pa-pers given in Part I of this book Nevertheless I do hope to say a few things notcovered in the other chapters As a word of warning at least one section of thispaper will be purely speculative However these conjectures will be deeply root-ed in the extant source material of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II

2 Background Information What Do We Knowabout Shalmaneser Vsup2

Before diving into the heart of matters let me introduce Shalmaneser V the chiefprotagonist of our story according to a Babylonian chronicle the Bible and theclassical historian Josephus

From Babylonian King List A the Ptolemaic Canon and several Neo-Assyr-ian letters we know that the man who would be the fifth Assyrian king with thename Shalmaneser also went by the name Ulūlāyu his nickname or birth namesup3

For details on Shalmaneser VUlūlāyu see Albert Kirk Grayson ldquoAssyria Tiglath-pileser III toSargon II (744ndash705 BC)rdquo in The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and other States of the NearEast from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC The Cambridge Ancient History 32 second ed-ition ed John Boardman et al (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1991) 85ndash86 HeatherD Baker ldquoSalmānu-ašarēdrdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire vol 3I edHeather D Baker (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2002) 1077 no 5 Heather DBaker ldquoSalmaneser Vrdquo in RlA vol 117ndash8 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin de Gruyter 2008)585ndash87 Karen Radner ldquoUlūlāiurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire vol 3IIed Heather D Baker (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2011) 1375 no 3 Hayim Tad-mor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalma-neser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) 14 Karen RadnerldquoShalmaneser V king of Assyria (726ndash722 BC)rdquo in Assyrian Empire Builders (London UniversityCollege London 2012) httpwwwuclacuksargonessentialskingsshalmaneserv (accessed102017) and Keiko Yamada and Shigeo Yamada ldquoShalmaneser V and His Era Revisitedrdquo inlsquoNow It Happened in Those Daysrsquo Studies in Biblical Assyrian and Other Ancient Near EasternHistoriography Presented to Mordechai Cogan on His 75th Birthday eds Amitai Baruchi-UnnaTova Forti Shmuel Ahituv Israel Ephʿal and Jeffrey H Tigay (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns2017) 387ndash442 For the relevant sections of Babylonian King List A and the Ptolemaic Canon see Tadmor andYamada Tiglath-pileser III 15ndash 16 For details on these texts see Jamie Novotny ldquoBabylonianKing List A (BM 033332 Rm 3 005)rdquo in The Royal Inscriptions of Babylonia online (Munich

36 Jamie Novotny

A handful of royal letters attest to the crown prince Ulūlāyu playing an activerole in his fatherrsquos administration particularly in the affairs of the westernpart of the empire His responsibilities included securing sufficient supplies co-ordinating security details for the queen (perhaps his mother) and receiving am-bassadorial delegations visiting the capital Calah (Kalḫu modern Nimrud) Hison-the-job training gave him excellent knowledge of Assyriarsquos western vassalkingdoms and prepared him well for his royal duties once he became king Ac-cording to a Babylonian chronicle Shalmaneser ascended the throne of Assyriawithout opposition shortly after Tiglath-pileser died this was in the year 727⁴

Hard facts about his short reign are rather scarce since textual and archaeo-logical evidence for his stint as king are almost non-existent This is in part dueto that fact that no royal inscription of his has survived apart from a set of lion-shaped weights⁵ The passage recording events of his reign in the EponymChronicle is heavily damaged and the relevant details are completely brokenaway⁶ Nevertheless it is fairly certain he stayed at home during his first yearas king and that military expeditions were conducted in his second third andfourth years on the throne Unfortunately the names of his military targets aremissing The kingdom of Bīt-Ḫumria the Assyrian name for Israel may havebeen named in this source since the Bible (2Kgs 173ndash6 and 2Kgs 189ndash 12) re-cords that Shalmaneser campaigned in that region⁷ As for what happened inhis fifth year as king nothing is preserved in the Eponym Chronicle A Babyloni-an chronicle provides one important piece of information Shalmaneser is report-

Oracc 2016) httporaccmuseumupenneduribokinglistskinglista (accessed 102017) andHenry Heitmann-Gordon ldquoFirst Section of the Ptolemaic Canonrdquo in The Royal Inscriptions ofBabylonia online (Munich Oracc 2016) httporaccmuseumupenneduribokinglistsptolemaiccanon (accessed 102017) For the letters from Calah see Karen Radner ldquoSalmanassar Vin den Nimrud Lettersrdquo AfO 50 (2003ndash4) 95ndash 104 and Mikko Luukko The Correspondence ofTiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from CalahNimrud (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2013)LndashLII and 10ndash 13 nos 8ndash 11 Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley NY Augustin 1975) 73no 1 i 24ndash28 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 18 Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 171ndash81 nos 1ndash9 and Frederick Mario Fales ldquoThe As-syrian Lion-Weights A Further Attemptrdquo in Libiamo nersquo lieti calici Ancient Near Eastern StudiesPresented to Lucio Milano ed Paola Corograve et al (Munster Ugarit-Verlag 2016) 483ndash507 Alan Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian TextCorpus Project 1994) 45ndash46 59 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 17ndash 18 For textual references and bibliography see Ariel M Bagg Die Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen derneuassyrischen Zeit Teil 1 Die Levante (Wiesbaden Reichert 2007) 50 For a recent study of theAssyrian Empire and the west see Ariel M Bagg Die Assyrer und das Westland Studien zur his-torischen Geographie und Herrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1 Jt vuZ (Leuven Peeters 2011)especially 213ndash44

Contextualizing the Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel 37

ed to have ravaged Samaria⁸ 2Kgs 17 and 18 and Josephus (Antiquitates JudaicaeIX 15) also credit him with the conquest of Israelrsquos capital inscriptions of his suc-cessor however infer that Sargon II captured Samaria⁹ Exactly when Shalma-neser attacked Israel and when Samaria was captured is uncertain but it issometimes thought that Samaria fell towards the end of his reign possibly inhis fifth year Shalmaneser appears to have added three new provinces to Assyria(Que Samʾal and Samaria)sup1⁰ and he may have besieged the Phoenician cityTyre if the account of Josephus (Antiquitates Judaicae IX 16) is to be believed

No building activity by this Shalmaneser is known so far However a brickfound at Apku modern Tell Abu Marya may belong to him and assuming theattribution proves correct then this brick may attest to construction in that citysup1sup1

The end of Shalmaneserrsquos reign is known only from a text composed underthe auspices of his brother and successorsup1sup2 The ldquoAššur Charterrdquo portrays Shal-maneser as an oppressive ruler who had robbed the citizens of the city ofAššur of their god-given privileges and imposed hard labor upon them BecauseShalmaneser angered the gods he was violently removed from the throne andreplaced by someone more suitable his brother who took the name Šarru-ukīn (Šarru-kēnuŠarru-kīn)sup1sup3 A Babylonian chronicle states that Shalmaneserdied and was succeeded a few days later by Sargonsup1⁴ no reference to the violent

Grayson Chronicles 73 no 1 i 28 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 18 The identity of the Assyrian king who captured Samaria (Shalmaneser V or Sargon II) whetherthe Assyrians conquered that city once or twice and when that city fell are still matters of schol-arly debate Those issues fall outside the scope of the present paper but are addressed elsewherein this volume In sect 43 it is assumed however that Samaria may have succumbed to Assyriawhile Shalmaneser was still on the throne For summaries and assessments of relevant scholarlydiscussion see for example Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fall of Samaria in Light of RecentResearchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 and Kenneth Bergland ldquoAnalysis and Assessment of Chrono-logical Explanations of the Fall of Samariardquo Spes Christiana 22ndash23 (2011ndash 12) 63ndash84 for furtherbibliographical references see n 5 of Frahmrsquos chapter in this volume Karen Radner ldquoProvinz C Assyrienrdquo in RlA vol 111ndash2 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin deGruyter 2006) 62 nos 57ndash59 Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 183ndash84 Henry WF Saggs ldquoHistorical Texts and Fragments of Sargon II of Assyria 1 The lsquoAššur Char-terrsquordquo Iraq 37 (1975) 11ndash20 and Galo W Vera Chamaza ldquoSargon IIrsquos Ascent to the Throne ThePolitical Situationrdquo SAAB 61 (1992) 21ndash33 See also Text 1 in Frahmrsquos chapter in this volume For a discussion about the meaning of Sargonrsquos name (ldquoThe righteous kingrdquo or ldquoHe [= thegod] made firm the kingrdquo) see eg Andreas Fuchs ldquoSargon IIrdquo in RlA vol 121ndash2 ed MichaelP Streck (Berlin de Gruyter 2009) 51ndash53 sect 2 and Andreas Fuchs ldquoŠarru-kēnu Šarru-kīn Šarru-ukīnrdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire vol 3II ed Heather D Baker and Rob-ert D Whiting (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2011) 1239ndash47 no 2 Grayson Chronicles 73 no 1 i 29ndash31 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 18

38 Jamie Novotny

circumstances of his death is given in that sourceWe just have Sargonrsquos word onthe matter

No positively identified inscriptions of Shalmaneser V have survived apartfrom several bilingual Akkadian-Aramaic lion weightssup1⁵ One expects that moreofficial texts of his must have existed in antiquity this is suggested by the factthat inscriptions of other Assyrian kings ndash for example Sennacherib and Esar-haddon ndash were written well before their fifth regnal years as well as in theirfifth year as kingsup1⁶ Because he is known to have carried out at least three mili-tary expeditions (according to the Eponym Chronicle) it would be highly unusu-al had Shalmaneser not taken the opportunity to record his deeds Althoughthere is a near complete gap in the textual record for the five years that Shalma-neser was king we can still speculate about what he may have recorded abouthimself and what form those royal compositions may have taken

To put our conjectured now-lost sources into context we must dive into theextant corpora of Shalmaneserrsquos immediate predecessor and successor Let usstart with those of Tiglath-pileser III

3 Brief Overview of the Official Inscriptionsof Tiglath-pileser IIIsup1⁷

Thirty-four or thirty-five inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III excluding those ofhis wife Yabacirc and several of his subordinates are known The complete corpusof texts has been recently published by Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada forthe Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period Project directed by Grant

See n 5 above Eg A Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of As-syria (704ndash681 BC) Part 1 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2012) 29ndash69 nos 1ndash4 and ErleLeichty The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon King of Assyria (680ndash669 BC) (Winona LakeIN Eisenbrauns 2011) 119ndash34 nos 57ndash59 For the inscriptions of Sargon II written near the be-ginning of his reign see Texts 1ndash3 in Frahmrsquos chapter For details on Tiglath-pileser III and his reign see eg Grayson ldquoTiglath-pileser III to Sar-gon IIrdquo 71ndash85 Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 12ndash 14 Heather D Baker ldquoTukultī-apil-Ešarrardquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire vol 3II ed Heather D Baker (Hel-sinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2011) 1329ndash31 no 3 Heather D Baker ldquoTiglatpileserIIIrdquo in RlA vol 141ndash2 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin de Gruyter 2006) 21ndash4 and Karen Rad-ner ldquoTiglath-pileser III king of Assyria (744ndash727 BC)rdquo in Assyrian Empire Builders (LondonUniversity College London 2012) httpwwwuclacuksargonessentialskingstiglatpileseriii(accessed 102017)


Frame of the University of Pennsylvaniasup1⁸ These self-aggrandizing compositionsare found on a variety of stone clay and metal objects The most important arewritten on wall slabs with reliefs threshold slabs mud bricks clay tablets and astele The majority were discovered in the citadel of Calah in the ruins of theCentral and South-West Palaces while a few others were found at Aššur ArslanTash and western Iran Following Tadmor scholars generally divide this kingrsquostexts into three categories (1) chronologically-arranged annals (2) geographical-ly-organized summary inscriptions and (3) miscellaneous texts which includelabels and building inscriptionssup1⁹

The most important inscription of Tiglath-pileser is the so-called ldquoCalah An-nalsrdquosup2⁰ This modern conflation of several ancient texts is a long running annal-istic account of the events of Tiglath-pileserrsquos reign from his accession year to hisfifteenth or seventeenth year as kingsup2sup1 Copies of it were originally inscribed onthe walls of rooms and corridors of the Central Palace usually in a horizontalband separating the sculpted upper and lower registerssup2sup2 Due in part to thefact that the seventh-century Assyrian king Esarhaddon dismantled the CentralPalace and reused some of the sculpted wall slabs in his own palace most ofTiglath-pileserrsquos annals have not survivedsup2sup3 One third if not less of the CalahAnnals are known today and the known pieces may represent parts of four or

For details on the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (with references to previous scholarly lit-erature) see Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III and its online version on Royal Inscriptionsof the Neo-Assyrian Period online httporaccmuseumupennedurinaprinap1 (accessed 102017) Much of the contents of that volume is based on Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Ti-glath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Edition with Introductions Translations and Commentary(Jerusalem The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1994) Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 22ndash25 This classification of the corpus is main-tained in Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III see pp 4ndash 10 of that volume Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 27ndash89 216ndash21 and 238ndash59 and Tadmor and Ya-mada Tiglath-pileser III 4ndash8 and 19ndash79 nos 1ndash34 See also John Malcolm Russell The Writingon the Wall Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 1999) 88ndash96 For details see Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 4ndash7 Tadmorrsquos designations for theinscriptions are followed here For drawings showing the position of the text of the Calah Annals on the extant wall slabssee Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 241ndash56 (= Figures 11ndash2) Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 10ndash12 and Richard David Barnett and MargareteFalkner The Sculptures of Aššur-naṣir-apli II (883ndash859 BC) Tiglath-pileser III (745ndash727 BC)Esarhaddon (681ndash669 BC) from the Central and South-West Palaces at Nimrud (London Trust-ees of the British Museum 1962) 1ndash7 and 20ndash23 provide good information about the poor con-dition in which Tiglath-pileserrsquos palace and its inscribed and sculpted wall slabs were discov-ered See also sect 41 (with n 49) below

40 Jamie Novotny

five different texts The surviving material is divided into three hypothetical ser-ies Series A the ldquoHall of the Seven-Line Seriesrdquo Series B the ldquoHall of theTwelve-Line Seriesrdquo and Series C the ldquoColossal Slabs (Series)rdquo When all threeseries are combined the extant text of the Annals preserves parts of the pro-logue reports of Tiglath-pileserrsquos 1stndash3rd (745ndash743) 7thndash9th (739ndash737) 11th(735) 13th (733) and 15th (731) regnal years and an account of the constructionof Tiglath-pileserrsquos palace This badly damaged set of inscriptions narrated themilitary achievements of every year of the kingrsquos reign up to his fifteenth or sev-enteenth regnal year The Calah Annals are one of the principal Assyrian sourcesthat provide evidence about the last days of Israel Of note Menahem of Samariais said to have paid tribute to Assyria and sixteen districts of Bīt-Ḫumria are re-ported to have been destroyedsup2⁴

Annals of the king were written on other media including provincial stelesand rock reliefssup2⁵ The two best surviving examples are a stele discovered in west-ern Iran and a panel carved into a rock face near Mila Mergi in Kurdistan Copiesof Tiglath-pileserrsquos annals would have been inscribed on clay foundation docu-ments that would have been deposited into the structures of buildings construct-ed or repaired by him No such object bearing his annals is known todaysup2⁶ Someof these now-lost documents are presumed to have been destroyed in antiquityby Esarhaddon when he built his own royal residence at Calah or in moderntimes by local inhabitants or nineteenth century excavatorssup2⁷ There is littledoubt in my mind that such texts existed despite their current lack in the ar-chaeological record

Several of Tiglath-pileserrsquos so-called ldquoSummary Inscriptionsrdquo are alsoknownsup2⁸ These compositions were written on stone pavement slabs and claytablets near the end of his reign probably late in 729 or in 728 and they givea summary of his military achievements by geographical region The reacutesumeacuteof victories usually began with events in the south and then continued withthose of the east and north and concluded with events in the west The narrative

Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 46 no 14 line 10 61ndash63 nos 21ndash22 70 no 27 line 3and 77 no 32 line 2 Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 90ndash116 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-piles-er III 8ndash9 and 79ndash94 nos 35ndash38 This might not be entirely true as a small clay fragment found at Aššur (VAT 12938) might beinscribed with a version of Tiglath-pileserrsquos annals Too little of that inscription is preserved toproperly classify it See n 23 above and sect 41 below Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 117ndash204 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-piles-er III 9ndash10 and 94ndash 138 nos 39ndash52


divides the accomplishments of the king as follows (1) the Babylonia wars(2) the Zagros campaigns (3) the wars with Urarṭu and its allies (4) the conquestof northern Syrian states and (5) the military operations in southern Syria Pal-estine and Arabia Two of the summary inscriptions report on Israel Tiglath-pi-leser claims to have conquered parts of Bīt-Ḫumria as well as states that Pekahwas killed and Hoshea was installed as king in his steadsup2⁹ Although this type ofinscription is less descriptive than annalistic texts summary inscriptions never-theless provide important historical information and supplement and compli-ment details provided by the annals

With regard to the miscellaneous category of inscriptionssup3⁰ I will brieflymention just one type epigraphs Three epigraphs of Tiglath-pileser III surviveand these one-word labels help us identify cities shown in reliefs being besiegeddestroyed and lootedsup3sup1 This text type is extremely important as such texts oftenname places not mentioned in other textssup3sup2 This is the case for all three epi-graphs of Tiglath-pileser

Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 106 no 42 lines 15primebndash19primea and 112 no 44 lines17primendash 18prime On the death (murderassassination) or overthrow of Pekah in these texts see TadmorTiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 141 (note to line 17prime) 277 and 281 and Tadmor and YamadaTiglath-pileser III 106 (note to no 42 line 17prime) According to 2Kgs 1525 Pekah was assassinatedby Hoshea a man whom Tiglath-pileser claims to have installed as king Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 205ndash 15 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileserIII 10 and 139ndash54 nos 53ndash64 Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 143ndash46 nos 55ndash57 The city Gazru in text no 57 isprobably to be identified with biblical Gezer an Israelite city located in the Vale of Ayalon Thiscity was probably captured in 733 Although annalistic texts and summary inscriptions name many important opponents it iscertain that those inscriptions did not record the name of every person who was defeated andevery place that was captured Therefore many epigraphs accompanying reliefs play an impor-tant role in reconstructing Assyrian history since they provide information intentionally omittedin longer descriptions of military expeditions This is well attested throughout the Neo-Assyrianperiod The best-known example is the depiction of Sennacheribrsquos siege of Lachish This reliefwhich adorned the walls of Room XXXVI of the Southwest Palace at Nineveh shows many de-tails of the hard-fought siege of a well-fortified Judean city (not mentioned elsewhere in Senna-cheribrsquos annals) and its aftermath For the Lachish reliefs see Richard David Barnett ErikaBleibtreu and Geoffrey Turner Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Ninevehvol 2 (London Trustees of the British Museum 1998) 322ndash52

42 Jamie Novotny

4 Brief Overview of the Official Inscriptionsof Sargon IIsup3sup3

To date approximately 125 inscriptions of Sargon II excluding those of his wifeAtalya and several of his officials are known Unfortunately the complete cor-pus of texts has yet to be published in a single place Grant Framersquos manuscriptof this kingrsquos inscriptions are in an advanced state of preparation and should ap-pear in 2019 (or 2020)sup3⁴ The major texts from Khorsabad Nineveh and Aššurhowever have been carefully edited by Andreas Fuchssup3⁵ This rich source mate-rial is found on a plethora of stone clay and metal objects The most importantcompositions were written on wall slabs with reliefs threshold slabs human-headed bull colossi prisms cylinders and provincial steles Given this kingrsquos ef-forts to build himself a new royal city it is little surprise that about half (46) ofthe inscriptions were found at Dūr-Šarrukīn with the highest percentage comingfrom his own palace As one expects from a late-eighth-century Assyrian kingmany inscriptions of his were discovered in the ruins of Aššur Calah and Nine-veh In addition building inscriptions of his come from Babylon and Uruk Bab-ylonian cities where he sponsored building and steles of his commemoratingvictories on the battlefields have been found in Cyprus Iran Israel Syria andTurkey Sargonrsquos scribes wrote out detailed chronologically-arranged annalsgeographically-organized summary inscriptions labels (including epigraphs)dedicatory texts and building inscriptions In addition a few unique composi-tions have survived for example ldquoSargonrsquos Letter to Aššurrdquo which reports on acampaign conducted against Urarṭu and the city Muṣaṣir and the ldquoAššur Char-

For details on Sargon II and his reign see eg Grayson ldquoTiglath-pileser III to Sargon IIrdquo86ndash 102 Fuchs ldquoSargon IIrdquo 51ndash61 Fuchs ldquoŠarru-kēnu Šarru-kīn Šarru-ukīnrdquo 1239ndash47no 2 Karen Radner ldquoSargon II king of Assyria (721ndash705 BC)rdquo in Assyrian Empire Builders (Lon-don University College London 2012) httpwwwuclacuksargonessentialskingssargonii(accessed 102017) and Sarah C Melville The Campaigns of Sargon II King of Assyria 721ndash705BC (Norman OK University of Oklahoma Press 2016) See also Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume I would like to thank Grant Frame for allowing me use of his unpublished manuscript TheRoyal Inscriptions of Sargon II King of Assyria (721ndash705 BC) prior to its publication as volume 2in the series The Royal Inscription of the Neo-Assyrian Period Access to his Sargon material fa-cilitated the writing of this section Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (Goumlttingen Cuvillier Verlag 1994)and Andreas Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711 vChr nach Prismenfragmenten aus Ninive undAssur (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1998) This section overlaps to some extentFrahmrsquos chapter in this volume see that chapter for further details


terrdquo which describes his succession to the thronesup3⁶ Most of the dateable textswere written during the second half of his reign between his eighth regnalyear 714 and his sixteenth regnal year 706 at least one text was written atthe very beginning of his reign probably late in his second regnal year 720sup3⁷

Following in the footsteps of his predecessors including the powerful ninth-century ruler Ashurnasirpal II Sargon had his annals inscribed on the walls ofhis palace the slabs of Rooms IIV XIII XIV and Court VII bore this textsup3⁸ Eachof the aforementioned rooms contained a complete version of the inscriptionThese annalistic texts were always written in a broad horizontal band separatingthe elaborately sculpted upper and lower registers The width of the inscribedband and thereby the number of lines per column depended on the size ofthe room for example the middle register in Room II accommodated thirteenlines of text while the central band in Room V was wide enough for seventeenlines of text Unfortunately large passages are now missing from each version ofSargonrsquos annals none are fully preserved This lengthy text recorded in chrono-logical order the deeds of his first fourteen years and thus provides a compre-hensive picture of Sargonrsquos seventeen-year reign Unfortunately many of the de-tails of his second regnal year when Samaria and Bīt-Ḫumria participated in arebellion organized by Hamath are very fragmentarily preserved in this textEckart Frahm in the following chapter will provide details about the campaignof 720 as well as editions of the relevant passages These versions of the annalsconcluded with a description of the creation of this kingrsquos new capital alongwith the construction and decoration of Sargonrsquos own palace This group oftexts was composed towards the end of his reign around 707 his fifteenth regnal

For ldquoSargonrsquos Letter to Aššurrdquo see Franccedilois Thureau-Dangin Une relation de la huitiegravemecampagne de Sargon (Paris Geuthner 1912) and Walter Mayer Assyrien und Urarṭu I DerAchte Feldzug Sargons II im Jahr 714 vChr (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 2013) For the ldquoAššur Char-terrdquo see Saggs ldquoHistorical Texts and Fragments of Sargon II of Assyriardquo 11ndash20 Vera ChamazaldquoSargon IIrsquos Ascent to the Thronerdquo 21ndash33 and Text 1 in Frahmrsquos chapter For a helpful chart of the dates of the most important inscriptions of Sargon see Fuchs ldquoSar-gon IIrdquo 52 The ldquoTell Asharneh Stelerdquo and ldquoTell Tayinat Stelerdquo (Texts 2ndash3 in Frahmrsquos chapter)probably also date to around 720 For details on these two texts see Grant Frame ldquoThe TellAcharneh Stela of Sargon II of Assyriardquo in Tell Acharneh 1998ndash2004 ed Michel Fortin (Turnh-out Brepols 2006) 49ndash68 esp 49ndash52 and Jacob Lauinger and Stephen Batiuk ldquoA Stele ofSargon II at Tell Tayinatrdquo ZA 105 (2015) 54ndash68 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 82ndash188 See also Grant Frame ldquoThe Orderof the Wall Slabs with Sargonrsquos Annals in Room V of the Palace at Khorsabadrdquo in From theUpper Sea to the Lower Sea Studies on the History of Assyria and Babylonia in Honour of AKGrayson ed Grant Frame (Istanbul and Leiden Netherlands Institute for the Near East2004) 89ndash 102 Russell The Writing on the Wall 111ndash 15 and Texts 7 and 10 in Frahmrsquos chapter

44 Jamie Novotny

year compare the Calah Annals of Tiglath-pileser III which were composedaround his seventeenth year as king Other annalistic texts of his are attestedand these are preserved on prisms prismatic cylinders tablets and stelesmany are badly damaged with much of their original contents missingsup3⁹

Another important text of Sargon inscribed on the walls of his palace is theso-called ldquoGreat Display Inscriptionrdquo⁴⁰ Copies of it were found in Rooms I IVVII VIII and X and unlike the annals this composition described the militaryexpeditions geographically starting with the east and ending with the southeastIn this inscription Sargon states that he plundered Samaria and the entire landof Bīt-Ḫumria A shorter version of this text the so-called ldquoSmall Display Inscrip-tionrdquo is also known and it likewise mentions the defeat of the inhabitants ofBīt-Ḫumria and Samaria in 720⁴sup1 Both compositions were written in or afterhis fifteenth year (707)

Sargon had his scribes write out at least one inscription that is a perfectblend of a display and building inscription this is the so-called ldquoBull Inscrip-tionrdquo⁴sup2 Numerous human-headed bull colossi flanking the prominent gatewaysat Khorsabad including several from Sargonrsquos palace are inscribed with a textthat included a short geographical summary of this rulerrsquos victories and alengthy account of the creation of Dūr-Šarrukīn With one known exceptionthe Bull Inscription was distributed between a pair of bulls Each colossushad two rectangular panels one below its belly and one between its hindlegs and was inscribed with approximately half of the text Thus the completetext required two bulls and four inscribed surfaces The Door M Room VIII co-lossi however were different each of those bulls bore a complete inscriptionwritten in two inscribed surfaces The information included in this text which

For example see Cyril J Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954)173ndash201 (= ldquoNimrud Prismrdquo) Louis D Levine Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae from Iran (Toronto RoyalOntario Museum 1972) (= ldquoNajafehabad Stelerdquo) Franccediloise Malbran-Labat ldquoSection 4 Inscrip-tion assyrienne (No 4001)rdquo in Kition dans les textes Kition-Bamboula 5 ed Marguerite Yon(Paris Eacuteditions Recherche sur les Civilisations 2004) 345ndash54 (= ldquoCyprus Stelerdquo) Fuchs Die In-schriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 29ndash44 and 289ndash96 (= ldquoKhorsabad Cylinderrdquo) and FuchsDie Annalen des Jahres 711 v Chr (= ldquoNineveh Prismrdquo ldquoAššur Prismrdquo) See Texts 4 6 8 and13 in Frahmrsquos chapter Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 189ndash248 and 343ndash55 and Russell TheWriting on the Wall 111ndash5 See also Texts 9 and 12 in Frahmrsquos chapter Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 75ndash81 and 307ndash 12 See also Text 16 inFrahmrsquos chapter Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 60ndash74 and 303ndash307 See also Russell TheWriting on the Wall 103ndash 108 and Text 17 in Frahmrsquos chapter


was written in or after his fifteenth year (707) compliments what was recorded inthe annals and display inscriptions

Sargonrsquos successes on the battlefield and his building activities at his newcapital are also recorded on numerous pavement slabs five or possibly six dif-ferent inscriptions are known from twenty-one or twenty-two threshold slabs⁴sup3Military matters are mentioned but only in a very cursory fashion The longest ofthe threshold inscriptions refers to the conquest of Bīt-Ḫumria and Samaria

As mentioned earlier there are many other sub-genres of official inscriptionscomposed during the reign of Sargon As for building inscriptions texts record-ing only the construction of a palace or temple these are attested on a wider va-riety of objects in particular clay cylinders and stone and metal foundation tab-lets We know from mid-nineteenth century French excavations at Khorsabadthat such (stone and metal) tablets were sometimes placed inside alabaster cof-fers and deposited within the walls of buildings⁴⁴ One unique royal compositionfrom this time is a text often referred to as ldquoSargonrsquos Eighth Campaignrdquo ldquoSar-gonrsquos Letter to Godrdquo or ldquoSargonrsquos Letter to Aššurrdquo⁴⁵ The inscription consists ofan initial address to the god Aššur the body of the text which records in minutedetail a campaign directed against Urarṭu and the city Muṣaṣir in the rulerrsquoseighth regnal year (713) and a concluding statementcolophon This royal reportis generally classified as a letter to a god a rarely attested genre of text and it issometimes thought ldquonot to be deposited in silence in the sanctuary but to be ac-tually read to a public that was to react directly to their contentsrdquo and that ldquotheyreplace in content and most probably in form the customary oral report of theking or his representative on the actual campaign to the city and the priesthoodof the capitalrdquo⁴⁶

Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 249ndash75 and 356ndash63 See also Text 18 inFrahmrsquos chapter Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 45ndash52 and 296ndash300 These tablets made ofgold (AO 19933 formerly Nap III 2897) silver (AO 21371 formerly Nap III 2898) bronze (AO21370 formerly Nap III 2900) and magnesite (Nap III 2899) were discovered in 1854 insidealabaster coffers embedded in the mud-brick wall between Rooms 17 and 19 of Sargonrsquos palaceat Dūr-Šarrukīn See n 36 above A Leo Oppenheim ldquoThe City of Assur in 714 B Crdquo JNES 19 (1960) 143With regard to lettersto gods see eg Rykle Borger ldquoGottesbriefrdquo in RlA vol 38 ed Ernst Weidner and Wolframvon Soden (Berlin de Gruyter 1971) 575ndash76 and Oppenheim ldquoThe City of Assur in 714 BCrdquo 133ndash47

46 Jamie Novotny

5 Conjectured now-lost Assyrian inscriptions andtheir contents

Now that I have given a brief overview of the most important extant Assyrian in-scriptions from 744 to 705 let me address what now-lost sources may have toldus about the end of the kingdom of Israel

51 Lost inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III

Compared to kings like Sargon II and Sennacherib or even Esarhaddon relative-ly few inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III especially from his own palace have sur-vived Now-lost texts of his or passages of known texts that are no longer pre-served would have provided some information about Bīt-Ḫumria and its rulersPeqah and Hoshea Annalistic texts including now-lost portions of the CalahAnnals would have provided many details about Tiglath-pileserrsquos western cam-paigns ndash which took place during his eleventh twelfth and thirteenth regnalyears ndash and thus would have provided the Assyrian point of view of events re-corded in 2Kgs 15 and 16 These texts would have contained more informationthan what is already known from contemporary summary inscriptions At pres-ent no annalistic accounts for the years 734 and 732 are extant and what is pre-served for the year 733 is too badly damaged for proper assessment⁴⁷ Tiglath-pi-leserrsquos annals based on statements in two summary inscriptions would verylikely have described or mentioned Pekahrsquos removal from the throne andorhis deathassassination It would have been nice to have had contemporary con-firmation of the information given in 2Kgs 1525 which states that Hoshea mur-dered his successor On the other hand it is possible that Assyrian texts wouldhave credited Pekahrsquos death to Tiglath-pileser as he is the central figure of his

The relevant section of one version of the Calah Annals reads ldquohellip [hellip] without hellip [hellip I utterlydemolished hellip] of sixteen dis[tricts of the land Bīt-Ḫumria (Israel) I carried off (to Assyria) hellip]capti[ves from hellip] 226 [captives from hellip hellip] captives [from hellip] 400 [(and hellip) captives from hellip]656 cap[tives from the city Sahellip hellip] (altogether) 13520 [people hellip] with their belongings [I hellipthe cities Arumacirc (and) Marum (hellip) which are] sit[uated in] rugged mountainsrdquo (Tadmor and Ya-mada Tiglath-pileser III 61 no 21 lines 1primendash11prime) Another version of the annals has ldquo[hellip] hellip [hellip] hellip[hellip] I en[veloped] him [like] a (dense) fog [hellip I] ut[terly demolished hellip of sixteen] districts of theland Bīt-Ḫum[ria (Israel) I carried off (to Assyria) hellip captives from the city hellip]baracirc 625 captivesfrom the city hellipa[hellip hellip captives from the city] Ḫinatuna 650 captives from the city Ku[hellip hellip cap-tives from the city Ya]ṭbite 656 captives from the city Sahellip[hellip hellip with their belongings I hellip] thecities Arumacirc (and) Marum [hellip]rdquo (Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 62 no 22 lines 1primendash8primea)


self-aggrandizing compositions⁴⁸ Based on what little is preserved in the CalahAnnals for the year 733 and what is recorded in extant summary inscriptions theannals would have provided some details about the Israelite cities and districtsconquered and the number of people deported we do know that sixteen dis-tricts of Bīt-Ḫumria were ravaged by the Assyrian army Now-lost annalistictexts written closer to the events than the Calah Annals may have given more de-tails Such inscriptions may have been written on steles andor on (clay andorstone) foundation documents I assume that Tiglath-pileser had texts depositedin the walls of his palace and that many of these foundation documents werelost or destroyed when Esarhaddon had that royal residence dismantled tomake use of its building materials⁴⁹ Exposure to the elements and other lootingsof that building ancient and modern likely played a part in the near absence ofTiglath-pileserrsquos foundation documents today the few foundation tablets of his

Regarding the relevant passage in one of Tiglath-pileserrsquos summary inscriptions (Tadmorand Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 106 no 42 line 17prime) Tadmor (Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria141) correctly points out ldquo[hellip]-du-⸢x1⸣-⸢x2⸣ The possible restoration of the verb describing Peqahrsquosfate is still a riddle DU is the only completely preserved sign followed by KU (or UK) and a traceof another sign One might restore [i]-du-[ku-ma] or even [a]-du-[uk-ma] but in Smithrsquos draftthere is space to restore a longer word Rostrsquos is-ku-pu-ma is entirely conjectural According to2Kgs 1525 Peqah was assassinated by Hosheardquo For details see Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 10ndash 12 and Barnett and FalknerCentral and South-West Palaces at Nimrud 1ndash7 and 20ndash23 The best description of the stateof affairs in the Central Palace is provided by Austen Henry Layard for a group of slabs discov-ered there ldquoWalls of unbaked bricks could still be traced but the slabs with which they hadbeen paneled were no longer in their places being scattered about without order and lyingmostly with their faces on the flooring of baked bricks Upon them were both sculptures and in-scriptions Slab succeeded to slab and when I had removed nearly twenty tombs and clearedaway the earth from a space of about fifty feet square the ruins which had been thus uncov-ered presented a very singular appearance Above one hundred slabs were exposed to viewpacked in rows one against the other as slabs in a stone-cutterrsquos yard or as leaves of a giganticbook Every slab was sculptured and as they were placed in a regular series according to thesubjects upon them it was evident that they had been moved in the order in which they stoodfrom their original positions against the walls of sundried brick and had been left as foundpreparatory to their removal elsewhere hellip These sculptures resembled in many places someof the bas-reliefs found in the south-west palace in which the sculptured faces of the slabswere turned it will be remembered towards the walls of unbaked brick It appeared thereforethat the centre building had been destroyed to supply materials for the construction of the moresouthern edificerdquo Excerpted from Austen Henry Layard Nineveh and Its Remains A Narrative ofan Expedition to Assyria during the years 1845 1846 amp 1847 vol 2 (London John Murray 1849)19ndash20 For images of a trench with a deposit of Tiglath-pileserrsquos reliefs see Richard SobolewskildquoThe Polish Work at Nimrud Ten Years of Excavation and Study ZA 71 (181) fig 7 and [anon-ymous] ldquoNimrudrdquo inWCieniu Wojny (httpheritagepcmauweduplen accessed 102017) svArchaeological Sites Nimrud

48 Jamie Novotny

that we now have are all summary inscriptions and these were found elsewhereat Calah in the South-East Palace and in the temple of the god Nabucirc (Ezida)

As for missing information in summary inscriptions better preserved textsmight have clarified who killed Pekah Tiglath-pileser Hoshea or frightenedmembers of the Israelite court and elite

52 Lost Inscriptions of Sargon II

Jumping ahead to the reign of Sargon II there is a gap in the textual record atleast up to his eighth year (713) Most extant inscriptions of his referring to Sa-maria date to Sargonrsquos final years on the throne when his annals and displayinscriptions were engraved on the walls of his palace⁵⁰ Several texts from hissecond andor third year as king also record the defeat of the inhabitants of Sa-maria All of the known references to Israelrsquos capital in this corpus of texts are tothat cityrsquos participation in an anti-Assyrian rebellion that took place in 720 Ear-lier versions of the annals those written on steles and clay foundation recordsmight have provided us with only a few more details about what Sargon did inthe Levant during his second regnal year (720) thus giving us only a slightly bet-ter picture of the post-fall-of-Samaria landscape and the anti-Assyrian pockets ofresistance in the Levant Because the Great Display Inscription and a version ofthe kingrsquos annals written on clay prisms discovered at Calah a text written in theyear 706 contain rather descriptive accounts of the defeat of the inhabitants ofSamaria I have my doubts that yet-to-be-discovered inscriptions of Sargonwould have revealed more than what the known texts already tell us Perhapsthose lost inscriptions would have recorded a different number of deporteesand chariots carried off to Assyria For example some texts states that the Assyr-ians took 27290 inhabitants and 50 chariots while others appear to increasethose numbers to 47280 (reading not entirely certain) and 200 respectively⁵sup1

For editions of the relevant passages concerning Samaria and Bīt-Ḫumria see Frahmrsquos chap-ter in this volume The reading of the number in Nimrud Prism iv 31 is uncertain Frahm (this volume) reads itas [2]7 LIM 2 ME 80 (ldquo[2]7280rdquo) while Nadav Naʾaman reads it as [4]7 LIM 2 ME 80 (ldquo[4]7280rdquo)See Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Number of Deportees from Samaria in the Nimrud Prisms of SargonIIrdquo NABU 2000 1 no 1 Unfortunately the original object (IM 67661 ND 2601 + ND 3401 + ND3403 + ND 3417) which is now in the Iraq Museum (Baghdad) could not be checked to verifythe reading of the now-damaged number The number in Gaddrsquos copy looks more like [2]7than [4]7 see Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo pl XLVI


53 Lost inscriptions of Shalmaneser V

Assuming Shalmaneser V followed in the footsteps of his predecessors we ex-pect that he recorded his military conquests and building activities on a varietyof clay stone and metal objects If we look at what is preserved for other eighth-and seventh-century Assyrian rulers it is clear that kings started having theirscribes writing compositions in their names the first chance they got For exam-ple Sargon recorded the defeats of Elam and Hamath in inscriptions written inor just after his second year (720)⁵sup2 Sennacherib described his successes in Bab-ylonia in texts composed during his third year (702)⁵sup3 and Ashurbanipal comme-morated the installation of his brother as the king of Babylon and the return ofthe god Marduk in an inscription written shortly after ascending the throne (early668)⁵⁴ It has sometimes been suggested that because Shalmaneser reigned onlyfive years that he did not have time to have any inscriptions written in hisname⁵⁵ That proposal is not very plausible since texts of other kings areknown from their first years on the throne and since Shalmaneser is known tohave conducted no less than three campaigns (according to the Eponym Chroni-cle)⁵⁶ However this would certainly be the case if one was referring to annalistictexts and summary inscriptions carved on wall and pavement slabs It is clearfrom the extant texts of his father and brother that such monumental inscrip-tions were composed after sitting on the throne for more than a decade Thusgiven Shalmaneserrsquos five-year tenure as king we should only expect more mod-est texts in particular annals written on foundation documents and stelesbuilding texts written on foundation documents and bricks as well as royal ded-ications and proprietary labels written on a wide variety of objects includingbronze lion weights Apart from a set of weights⁵⁷ none of these objects have sur-vived So what happened to them

Let me try to answer that question before diving into what the texts mighthave included Many of Shalmaneserrsquos foundations documents may have suf-fered at the hands of his successors (Sargon II and Esarhaddon in particular)

See nn 36ndash37 above See n 16 above Jamie Novotny Selected Royal Inscriptions of Assurbanipal L3 L4 LET Prism I Prism T andRelated Texts (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2014) xvindashxvii 77ndash80 and 96ndash99 no 18 This textis commonly referred to as the ldquoL[ondon]4 Inscriptionrdquo or ldquoAshurbanipalrsquos School Days Inscrip-tionrdquo Compare Grayson ldquoTiglath-pileser III to Sargon IIrdquo 85 See n 6 above See n 5 above

50 Jamie Novotny

and thus did not survive antiquity At Calah his inscriptions may have been re-moved from their original locations when Esarhaddon decided to build a palacefor himself This seventh-century ruler made extensive use of the limestone slabsdecorating the walls and floors of Tiglath-pileserrsquos palace⁵⁸ Esarhaddon had theunfinished royal residence of his great grandfather dismantled numerous wallslabs transported further south and packed in rows one against the otherThe slabs that were installed in the South-West Palace before Esarhaddonrsquosdeath had their sculptured surfaces face the mudbrick wall in order to leavetheir uninscribed surfaces exposed In a few instances the slabs were re-cutto make them fit their new spaces⁵⁹ Any foundation document deposited inthe Central Palace may not have been treated with respect If Shalmaneserhad continued the work of his father at Calah then any inscribed object of hisin the Central Palace may have been removed during the demolition or left tothe elements⁶⁰ Thus it is possible that many of Shalmaneserrsquos inscriptions dis-appeared or were placed elsewhere in a location that has yet to be discoveredduring Esarhaddonrsquos reign Moreover given the tenor of the Aššur Charter thereis a possibility that Sargon had his brotherrsquos texts intentionally destroyed Thenear complete absence of official inscriptions from Shalmaneserrsquos reign maybe due to Sargonrsquos systematic attempt to erase any trace of his brotherrsquos accom-plishments as king this would have included destroying Shalmaneserrsquos founda-tion records Of course there are many other possible scenarios leading to thenear complete absence of inscriptions of Shalmaneser⁶sup1

See above sect41 (especially n 49) Further details about the reuse of earlier material in theSouth-West Palace can be found in Barnett and Falkner Central and South-West Palaces at Nim-rud 23ndash30 which excerpt Layardrsquos descriptions in Nineveh and Its Remains 1ndash2 According to Layard Nineveh and Its Remains 2 35 some of the edges of the orthostats ldquohadbeen cut away several letters of the inscriptions being destroyed in order to make the stones fitinto the wallrdquo In the ninth and eighth centuries Assyrian kings appear not to have deposited many clayfoundation records in their royal residences if those palaces had copies of annals and summa-rydisplay inscriptions prominently inscribed on sculpted orthostats No clay foundation docu-ments of Ashurnasirpal II have so far been found in the North-West Palace at Calah howeversome clay cylinders of Sargon II (the ldquoKhorsabad Cylinderrdquo) have been discovered in thatkingrsquos palace at Dūr-Šarrukīn None of the summary inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser written onclay tablets (assumed here to be foundation documents rather than archival copies) were discov-ered in the Central Palace which could have been the result of their removal by Esarhaddon One possibility is that Shalmaneser made only relatively minor repairs to buildings andwalls worked on by his father and therefore did not have foundation records deposited inthose structures Compare for example Aššur-etel-ilāni who restored a few rooms of theNabucirc temple (Ezida) at Calah and left his mark only in the form of inscribed bricks It is alsolikely that some of the temples palaces and walls worked on by Shalmaneser were subsequent-


As for the contents and media of these hypothetical texts I tentatively sug-gest that Shalmaneserrsquos scribes wrote out annalistic texts dedicatory inscrip-tions building inscriptions and proprietary labels Annalistic texts may havebeen inscribed on stele or on clay foundation tablets In my opinion prismsand cylinders were probably not used because tablets were the primary choiceof foundation document between 1076 and 721⁶sup2

We know that Shalmaneser led at least three campaigns and certainly hisscribes would have described one or more of these Because the targets of theexpeditions are not known apart from Bīt-Ḫumria and Samaria we cannot spec-ulate too much about the contents of this kingrsquos now-lost compositions Earlyversions of Shalmaneserrsquos annals those written in 725 or 724 may have descri-bed the destruction of Israel and may have included a statement about its lastkingrsquos anti-Assyrian behavior since the siege of Samaria is said to have lastedthree years this campaign likely took place during this kingrsquos second or thirdyear Assuming such accounts existed contemporary texts would have presum-ably given us a more comprehensive view of the last days of Israel and may haveconfirmed or contradicted information provided in 2Kgs 17 and 18 includingHoshearsquos capture prior to the siege of Samaria Given the fact that Assyriankings generally avoided referring to unfinished business for example in-prog-

ly rebuiltrestoredrepaired by Sargon II who did not return inscriptions of his brother that hisworkmen had found to their original spots as many inscriptions request of their successors butrather had them destroyed This might explain why no inscriptions of Shalmaneser have beendiscovered in the ruins of the Aššur temple (Eḫursaggalkurkurra) at Aššur or the Nabucirc temple(Ezida) at Calah assuming of course that this Assyrian king undertook such projects Moreoverit is likely that the bricks used for Shalmaneserrsquos repairs were not inscribed (or stamped) Assyr-ian kings did not always have inscriptions placed on bricks as is clear from eighth- and seventh-century repairs made to the aforementioned Ezida temple no inscribed bricks of Sargon II Sen-nacherib Esarhaddon Ashurbanipal or Sicircn-šarru-iškun have been found in that temple For thebuilding history of Ezida see Jamie Novotny and Greta Van Buylaere ldquoSicircn-šarru-iškun and Ezidain Calahrdquo in Homeland and Exile Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of Buste-nay Oded ed Gershon Galil Mark Geller and Alan Millard (Leiden Brill 2009) 233ndash35 No prisms or cylinders bearing Assyrian inscriptions are known between the reigns of Ti-glath-pileser I and Sargon II The latterrsquos scribes appear to have reintroduced prisms as a medi-um for writing out long descriptive annals and adopted the cylinder format for shorter textsfrom its southern neighbor Babylonia a cylinder of Marduk-apla-iddina II (Merodach-baladanof the Bible) from Uruk was brought back to Calah where it likely served as a model for Sargonrsquosown inscriptions K 3751 a clay tablet discovered in the South-East Palace at Calah is a goodexample of a clay foundation tablet used during the reign of Shalmaneser Vrsquos father for photo-graphs see Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 117 figures 6ndash7 On prisms see Benjamin Stu-devent-Hickman ldquoPrismardquo in RlA vol 111ndash2 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin de Gruyter 2006)4ndash6

52 Jamie Novotny

ress sieges Shalmaneserrsquos scribes may have done their best to not mention Sa-maria in these first reports If they did they presumably found a way to spin thenarrative in favor of their royal patron A good example of this is Sennacheribrsquossiege of Jerusalem a city whose capture is absent in reports of this kingrsquos an-nals⁶sup3

Later annalistic texts those written in the kingrsquos fourth and fifth regnal yearassuming such inscriptions existed may have recorded the capture of Samariaand the deportation of its inhabitants assuming of course that the city wastaken while Shalmaneser was still king Such compositions may have confirmed(or even contradicted) some of the information provided in 2Kgs 17 and 18 It ishighly unlikely however that Assyrian inscriptions would have admitted that ittook three years to capture the city Statements about the conquest of Samariaand the removal of its population livestock and property would likely havebeen incorporated into the earlier reports of the destruction of Bīt-ḪumriaWhether Shalmaneser had time to commemorate the capture of Samariawould have depended on how long before his death the city was taken andhow long and tumultuous the revolt that brought his reign and life to an end last-ed If it was captured too close to the tenth month of 722 then it is unlikely thatShalmaneser would have had time to record this event in texts written in hisname However if Samaria was taken in 723 or early in 722 then it is possiblethat Shalmaneser proudly boasted about capturing Bīt-Ḫumriarsquos capital

6 Conclusions

So then what can now-lost Assyrian inscriptions tell us about the last days ofIsrael Potentially a great deal This is certainly the case for Tiglath-pileser IIIand possibly the case for Shalmaneser V Texts of these two kings may have pro-vided important information about the years 734ndash732 and 725ndash722 and mayhave supplemented or contradicted the information provided in 2Kgs 15ndash 18However missing inscriptions of Sargon II would probably not improve ourknowledge about the anti-Assyrian activities of the inhabitants of Samaria inthe year 720 as that information is already known from a number of importanttexts Until new sources become available we can only guess at what the eighth-century Assyrian kings might have said about Bīt-Ḫumria its last two kings andits capital

Eg Grayson and Novotny Inscriptions of Sennacherib 1 65ndash66 no 4 lines 52ndash58 and176ndash77 no 22 iii 27bndash49


Eckart Frahm

Samaria Hamath and Assyriarsquos Conquestsin the Levant in the Late 720s BCE

The Testimony of Sargon IIrsquos Inscriptions

1 Introduction

The fall of Samaria in the late 720s BCE and the political and military actionsleading to and immediately following this fateful event with its major historicaland religious consequences are documented by several types of historical sour-ces The available evidence comprises

a) Texts from various backgrounds including the Hebrew Bible Assyrian royal inscriptionsAssyrian and Babylonian chronographic works as well as Assyrian administrative andlegal documents with references to Israelitessup1b) Images on Assyrian sculptures in Rooms V and VIII of Sargon IIrsquos palace in Khorsabadsup2c) Other artifacts most importantly a substantial number of ivories found in the Assyriancity of Calah and in Samaria itselfsup3d) Archaeological traces (albeit all in all modest) of the destruction and later rebuilding

The Assyrian royal inscriptions are discussed in this and in Jamie Novotnyrsquos contribution tothe volume at hand Notes on the chronographic texts are found in the last section of this chap-ter For the Assyrian administrative and legal documents see the articles by Radner and FalesSeveral other contributions to this book provide detailed analyses of the various Biblical textspertaining to the fall of Samaria See Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (Goumlttingen Cuvillier Verlag1994) 276ndash78 364 Christoph Uehlinger ldquolsquohellipund wo sind die Goumltter von Samarienrsquo Die Wegfuumlh-rung syrisch-palaumlstinischer Kultstatuen auf einem Relief Sargons II in ḪorsabadDūr-Šarrukīnrdquoin Und Mose schrieb dieses Lied aufhellip Festschrift fuumlr Oswald Loretz ed Manfried Dietrich andIngo Kottsieper (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 1998) 739ndash76 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoNo AnthropomorphicGraven Image Notes on the Assumed Anthropomorphic Cult Statues in the Temples of YHWH inthe Pre-Exilic Periodrdquo UF 31 (1999) 391ndash415 It is possible that the ivories found in Room SW 37 of Fort Shalmaneser at Calah (Nimrud) mayhave come from Assyriarsquos western campaigns in the 720s when Samaria was conquered Numer-ous ivories perhaps representing the same set were in fact found at Samaria in layers datingto the Late Hellenistic period when they were apparently dumped For discussion and furtherliterature see Claudia Suter ldquoImages Tradition and Meaning The Samaria and Other LevantineIvoriesrdquo in A Common Cultural Heritage Studies on Mesopotamia and the Biblical World in Honorof Barry L Eichler ed Grant Frame et al (Bethesda MD CDL Press 2011) 219ndash41 esp 220ndash21

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-004

that occurred as a consequence of the Assyrian conquests in the urban setting of Samariaand the (former) kingdom of Israel in general⁴

Reviewing this list it seems no exaggeration to claim that few other major eventsin ancient Near Eastern history are documented by larger numbers of writtendocuments and other evidence than the end of the kingdom of Israel is Andyet despite this embarrassment of riches ndash or perhaps rather because of it ndash As-syriologists and Hebrew Bible scholars such as Hayim Tadmor Bob BeckingNadav Narsquoaman Andreas Fuchs Gershon Galil Christine Tetley Ariel Baggand Sarah Melville to list only some of the many scholars who have contributedto the discussion have suggested very different scenarios and chronologies forthe events at issue⁵ Key questions that remain unanswered include whetherthe Assyrians conquered Samaria once or twice and when exactly whichroles were played by the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BCE) and Sar-

For Samaria see Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria Volume I Early Iron AgeThrough the Ninth Century BCE (Atlanta GA Scholars Press 1992) id The Archaeology of Is-raelite Samaria Volume II The Eighth Century BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2002)id ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samaria Toward a Dialogue between Texts and Archaeologyrdquo inUp to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean inHonor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie White Crawford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jerusalem W F Al-bright Institute of Archaeological Research Israel Exploration Society 2007) 258ndash79 seealso the short recent overview by Rupert Chapman ldquoSamaria ndash Capital of Israelrdquo BAR 435(2017) 24ndash30 63 Evidence for destruction by the Assyrian army is virtually non-existent atthe site of Samaria despite claims to the contrary in the very incomplete reports by KathleenKenyon on her 1930s excavations which were heavily based on the Biblical account For addi-tional information see the chapters on the archaeology of Samaria and other Israelite sitesfound elsewhere in this volume Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur A Chronological-Historical StudyrdquoJCS 12 (1958) 22ndash40 77ndash 100 Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and ArchaeologicalStudy (Leiden Brill 1992) Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background of the Conquest of Sa-maria (720 BC)rdquo Bib 71 (1990) 206ndash25 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad457ndash58 Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of SamariardquoCBQ 57 (1995) 52ndash65 M Christine Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Reason for Rejectingthe Hypothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ 64 (2002) 59ndash77 Ariel Bagg Die Assyrer und das West-land Studien zur historischen Geographie und Herrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1 Jt vuZ(Leuven Peeters 2011) 227ndash44 Sarah C Melville The Campaigns of Sargon II King of Assyria721ndash705 BC (Norman University of Oklahoma Press 2016) 65ndash76 Helpful summaries and crit-ical assessments of the scholarly discussion are provided by Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fallof Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 and Kenneth Bergland ldquoAnal-ysis and Assessment of Chronological Explanations of the Fall of Samariardquo Spes Christiana22ndash23 (2011ndash 12) 63ndash84 See now also Mordechai Cogan ldquoRestoring the Empire Sargonrsquos Cam-paign to the West in 72019 BCErdquo IEJ 67 (1967) 151ndash67

56 Eckart Frahm

gon II (721ndash705 BCE) respectively both of whom seem to have been involved inthe events what eventually happened to the last king of Israel Hoshea who wasin charge in Samaria in the aftermath of his deposition and finally whether thethree year siege of Samaria mentioned in the Bible (2Kgs 175ndash6) began in 725724 or perhaps even as late as 721 BCE if it ever took place

Several factors explain why modern scholars have so far failed to reach aconsensus on the issues in question One is that no inscriptions of any impor-tance from the reign of Shalmaneser V have yet been found⁶ Consequentlythe statement in the Babylonian Chronicle (I 27ndash28) that Shalmaneser ldquoravagedSamariardquo at some point during his five year long reign⁷ and similar claims madein the Bible cannot be paired with more elaborate accounts of this event writtenin the name of the king who supposedly brought it about Equally problematicis that several of the texts from Assyria that are available most notably the As-syrian Eponym Chronicle and a number of important inscriptions of Sargon IIoffer poorly preserved accounts of the events surrounding the fall of Samariandash and that Sargonrsquos inscriptions differ markedly in what they have to sayabout them And finally there is the problem that the most important Biblicalaccounts in 2Kgs 17 and 18 provide a number of chronological and historicalconundrums probably due to the fact that they misrepresent at least to somedegree the chronographic records and other traditions on which they were orig-inally based

This article does not aim at offering a reconstruction of the events that willsettle the discussion once and for all something that can probably only be ach-ieved if we are lucky enough one day to discover additional sourcesWhat it pri-marily seeks to provide instead is a presentation and a new assessment of the

For the most recent analysis of the inscribed weights from Shalmaneserrsquos reign the only ex-tant objects with texts written in the name of this king see Frederick Mario Fales ldquoThe AssyrianLion-Weights A Further Attemptrdquo in Libiamo nersquo lieti calici Ancient Near Eastern Studies Pre-sented to Lucio Milano ed Paola Corograve et al (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 2016) 483ndash507 Fales sug-gests very tentatively ldquothat the weight-standard lsquoof the landrsquo which came to be added only inAramaic on the lion-weights from his [scil Shalmaneser Vrsquos] reign enhanced by bronze handlescould have represented a ponderal measure then current in the territories of the Levant or Trans-euphratene such as had been annexed to Assyrian suzerainty by this rulerrdquo (p 497) For a thor-ough reevaluation of the reign of Shalmaneser V see now Keiko Yamada and Shigeo YamadaldquoShalmaneser V and His Era Revisitedrdquo in ldquoNow It Happened in Those Daysrdquo Studies in Bib-lical Assyrian and Other Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Mordechai Coganon His 75th Birthday ed Amitai Baruchi-Unna et al (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2017)387ndash442 (an article that appeared too late to be fully taken into consideration here butwhich comes to similar historical conclusions) A Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley NY Augustin 1975) 73

Samaria Hamath and Assyriarsquos Conquests in the Levant in the Late 720s BCE 57

various accounts of the victory over Samaria that are found in Sargon IIrsquos royalinscriptions ndash some of which have only recently become known It is hoped thatsuch an overview will at the very least help eliminate some of the less likelyhistorical solutions that have been proposed in the past Since the fall of Samariacannot be detached from the events surrounding the wide-ranging rebellion ofYau-birsquodi ndash or Ilu-birsquodi ndash of Hamath⁸ this latter event will feature quite promi-nently as well⁹

In the following I will present the relevant Sargon texts to the extent pos-sible in the sequence in which they were writtensup1⁰ trusting that such an ar-rangement will contribute to a better understanding of some chronological is-sues crucial for a historical analysis of the events under discussion Eventhough several students of Assyrian royal inscriptions most notably Liveranisup1sup1have shown that later campaign accounts that modify earlier ones should byno means be dismissed as historically worthless (despite their tendency to con-

It has long been supposed (even though some doubts remain) that the name Yau-birsquodi con-tains the theophoric element YHWH which could be seen as adding a religious dimension tothe alliance between the Hamathean insurgent and the Samarians see among others Stepha-nie Dalley ldquoYahweh in Hamath in the 8th Century BC Cuneiform Material and Historical Deduc-tionsrdquo VT 50 (1990) 21ndash32 One should keep in mind however that other members of the anti-Assyrian coalition of 720 BCE not the least Damascuswere clearly not particularly committed tothe worship of YHWH and that the rebellion therefore can hardly be seen as a ldquoholy warrdquowaged in the name of the Israelite god Ran Zadok ldquoIsraelites and Judaeans in the Neo-AssyrianDocumentation (732ndash602 BCE) An Overview of the Sources and a Socio-Historical Assess-mentrdquo BASOR 374 (2015) 159ndash89 esp 160 discusses the possibility that both Yau-birsquodi andan earlier Hamathean insurgent with an apparently Yahwistic name Azri-Yau ldquodescendedfrom dynastic marriages between Hamathean rulers and North Israelite princessesrdquo On rebellions against the Assyrian crown in general see Karen Radner ldquoRevolts in the Assyr-ian Empire Succession Wars Rebellions Against a False King and Independence Movementsrdquoin Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World and the Near East In the Crucible of Em-pire ed John J Collins and JG Manning (Leiden Brill 2016) 41ndash54 and Eckart Frahm ldquoRevoltsin the Neo-Assyrian Empire A Preliminary Discourse Analysisrdquo in Revolt and Resistance 76ndash89 For a discussion and convenient overview of the composition dates of Sargonrsquos royal inscrip-tions see Andreas Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711 vChr (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Cor-pus Project 1998) 81ndash96 and id ldquoSargon IIrdquo RlA 12 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin de Gruyter2009) 51ndash61 esp 52 It is important to note that the dates provided by Fuchs are mostly basedon the number of campaigns covered in the inscriptions and not on actual date formulas con-cluding them Given that there are substantial inconsistencies in the way Sargonrsquos scribes pro-vided chronological markers for the kingrsquos military activities some uncertainty remains Mario Liverani ldquoCritique of Variants and the Titulary of Sennacheribrdquo in Assyrian Royal In-scriptions New Horizons in Literary Ideological and Historical Analysis ed Frederick MarioFales (Rome Istituto per lrsquoOriente 1981) 225ndash57

58 Eckart Frahm

flate earlier and later historical events) the old rule established by Olmsteadsup1sup2that the very first reports an Assyrian king provides about a given military cam-paign tend to be the most reliable remains to some extent valid

2 The Samaria and Hamath Episodes in SargonIIrsquos Inscriptions

One of the earliest Sargon texts mentioning Samaria is the so-called ldquoAshurCharterrdquo which is actually a votive inscription for Assur copied from a silver ves-sel dedicated to the god (see ll 40ndash43) onto a clay tablet The ldquohistoricalrdquo part ofthe text which follows a panegyric introduction praising first the god Assur andthen King Sargon is devoted exclusively to events of Sargonrsquos second regnalyear that is 720 BCE

Text 1 Ashur Charter (covers events up to 720 BCE)sup1sup3

16) i-na 2-e BALA-ia šaacute ina gišGUZA LUGAL-ti uacute-ši-bu-ma a-ge-e be-lu-ti an-na-[ap-ru-ma]17) ILLAT mdḫum-ba-i-ga-aacuteš MAN KUR e-lam-ti uacute-par-ri-ra aacuteš-ku-na BAD5BAD5-šuacute ⸢md⸣[ia-uacute-

bi-irsquo-di]18) ⸢luacute⸣ḫa-ma-ta-a-a la EN gišGUZA la ši-nin-ti EacuteGAL šaacute ina SIPA-ut UNMEŠ ši-mat-s[u lā

šīmat (0)]19) a-na ANŠAacuteR KUR-šuacute UNMEŠ-šuacute ḪUL-tu la DUgraveGGA-tuacute uacute-ba-rsquou-uacute-ma il-qa-a ši-ṭ[u-(uacute‐)tu

(ṣimirra dimašqu ())]20) ⸢uru⸣ar-pa-da urusa-me-ri-na uacute-paḫ-ḫir-ma a-na i-di-šuacute uacute-ter-r[a mārē aššur ša ina māt

ḫamati () (hellip)]21) [ba]-⸢šu-uacute GIM DIŠ-en id-duk-ma⸣ na-piš-tuacute ul e-z[ib x x x x x x x x]22) [x x] x x x ⸢qa-ti aacuteš⸣-ši-ma aacuteš-šuacute ka-šad KUR ḫa-ma-t[i sakāp Yau-birsquodi () x x x]23) [ša māt a]-⸢mur-re⸣-e DAGAL-ti am-ḫur-ma ANŠAacuteR DINGI[R x x x x x x x x x]24) [ikribīya () i]š-me-ma il-qa-a su-pe-ia u[m-ma-na-at() aššur gapšāti() adkema()]25) [ḫarrān māt a-m]ur-re-e uacute-šaacute-aṣ-bit KUR ḫa-[ma-ta x x x x x x x x x x]26) [x x] x mu-ṣa-at šaacute-lam-du ta-nit-t[i x x x x x x x x x x x]27) [nīšēgimir() māt a-m]ur-re-e a-na GIgraveR2-ia uacute-šak-ni-[iš Yau-birsquodi šacircšu adi kimtišu

(mundaḫṣēšu) ()]28) ⸢a-na⸣ URU-ia urua-šur ub-la-ma helliphellip

Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead Assyrian Historiography A Source Study (Columbia MO Universityof Missouri 1916) Edition Henry W F Saggs ldquoHistorical Texts and Fragments of Sargon II of Assyria 1 ThelsquoAššur Charterrsquordquo Iraq 37 (1975) 11ndash20 Collated by the author from a photo posted on the websiteof the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) see httpscdliuclaedu (accessed 102017)


Notes to the text Line 18 restored after Text 11 (ldquoMosul Annalsrdquo) l 5 lines 20ndash22 after Text11 ll 14ndash15 18 and Text 3 (Tell Tayinat Stele) ll 5rsquondash7rsquo line 24 after Text 12 (KhorsabadDisplay Inscription) l 34 line 27 after Text 2 (Asharneh Stele) B 11 and other textsNote the new interpretation of line 26 mu-ṣa-at is apparently a feminine singular stativederived from wuṣṣucircmuṣṣucirc ldquoto spread outrdquo even though one would rather have expectedplural forms here

ldquoIn my second regnal year (palucirc) when I had settled on my royal throne and had beencrowned with the lordly crown I dispersed the forces of Ḫumba(n)igaš King of Elamand defeated himYau-birsquodi of Hamath (who was) not the (rightful) throne-holder (who was) unfit for (livingin) a palace and as whose fate [it had never been decreed] that he would (ever) shepherdthe people [(hellip)] (who) intended (to do) evil things that were not good against the godAssur his land and his people and treated (them) with insolence he gathered [ṢimirraDamascus] Arpad and Samaria and brought them to his side He killed [the citizens ofAssyria who] were [in Hamath (hellip)] all together and left no one alive[hellip] hellip I lifted my hand and prayed for the conquest of the land of Hamath [the overthrow ofYau-birsquodi and the hellip] of the vast land of Amurru Assur the god [hellip] listened [to my prayers]and received my supplication[I mobilized the vast] troops [of Assur] and had (them) take [the way to] the land of AmurruThe land of Hamath [hellip] hellip spread out was the corpse the praise [hellip] I made [the people allof] the land of Amurru bow to my feet [Yau-birsquodi (or Him) together with his family (and hisfighters)] I brought to my city Ashur (followed by an account of Sargonrsquos favorable treat-ment of the city of Ashur)rdquo

The Ashur Charter reveals a number of important details1) Sargon seems not to have campaigned at all during the last months of 722

BCE after he had become Assyrian kingsup1⁴ and during his entire first regnal year721 BCE Otherwise he would certainly have mentioned in the Ashur Chartermilitary accomplishments associated with these two years This makes it very un-likely that the Assyrian army began a siege of Samaria in 721 BCE as claimed byTetleysup1⁵ The Ashur Charter also helps establish why Sargon stayed at home dur-ing the period in question The text portrays Sargonrsquos predecessor Shalmanes-er V as a corrupt ruler who interfered with and harmed the cult of Assur Thisnegative appreciation strongly suggests that Sargon had come to the throne in

According to the Babylonian Chronicle Sargon ascended the Assyrian throne on the tenthday of Ṭebet (X) 722 BCE a few days after the death of his predecessor earlier that month Gray-son Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles 73 29ndash31 Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fallrdquo 59ndash77 Tetleyrsquos arguments suffer from the fact that sheignores much of the relevant Assyriological scholarship especially the important work on Sar-gon by Fuchs thus illustrating the perils of a ldquoGermanica non legunturrdquo approach The latteralso applies to the study by Sung Jin Park ldquoA New Historical Reconstruction of the Fall of Sa-mariardquo Bib 93 (2012) 98ndash106

60 Eckart Frahm

somewhat irregular fashion and had to deal with domestic opposition duringthe first months of his reign Other Sargon texts to be discussed later (seeTexts 13ndash 15 below) corroborate this assumptionsup1⁶

2) During the time of domestic unrest in Assyria Yau-birsquodi of Hamath hadstarted a revolt against the Assyrians that was soon joined by numerous impor-tant polities of the Westland including Arpad in northern Syria ndash and SamariaOther texts also mention Damascus and Ṣimirra plus it seems (in Text 11) somecities whose names are lost

3) While the Ashur Charter is short on detail it clearly states that the militaryactions initiated by Sargon in 720 BCE led to the defeat of the Western coalition(see line 27) Even though it is not explicitly pointed out it would seem that Sa-maria gave up its opposition as well but there is no unequivocal statement inthe text that this required a military attack on the city Moreover no ruler of Sa-maria is mentioned something that applies however also to the other states ofthe enemy coalitionsup1⁷

4) Yau-birsquodi together with his family (and some of his fighters) was broughtto Ashur where he was apparently flayed This last detail is known not from theAshur Charter but from later Sargon inscriptions (see below Texts 6 and 12) andan epigraph accompanying an image of a tortured enemy in Room VIII of Sar-gonrsquos palace in Khorsabadsup1⁸

Did Sargon participate in person in the Western campaign of 720 BCE or wasthe campaign conducted by his generals The Ashur Charter is not quite clear inthis regardsup1⁹ but another inscription on an Assyrian stele erected at Tell Ashar-neh on the Orontes River shortly after the events provides an answer to thisquestion

The counter-arguments raised by Galo W Vera Chamaza ldquoSargon IIrsquos Ascent to the ThroneThe Political Situationrdquo SAAB 6 (1992) 21ndash33 do not strike me as particularly convincing The one exception is Hamath but it is noteworthy that Yau-birsquodi is not presented as theldquokingrdquo of this polity Instead he appears ndash as in most other Sargon texts (for exceptions seebelow note 53) ndash as ldquoa man from Hamathrdquo (⸢luacute⸣ḫa-ma-ta-a-a) It may well be that Yau-birsquodibuilt his career in opposition to a Hamathean ruler with pro-Assyrian tendencies For the text see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 278 364 for a reproductionof an early drawing of the image see Pauline Albenda The Palace of Sargon King of Assyria(Paris Eacuteditions Recherche sur les civilisations 1986) pl 78 The Š-stem in l 25 points towards the latter scenario but the 1st person singular form in line28 suggests the former


Text 2 Tell Asharneh Stele (covers events up to 720 BCE)sup2⁰

Side B1rsquo) [hellip] x x x [hellip]2rsquo) [hellip] a-na AME[Š x (x)]3rsquo) [hellip]-šuacute uacute-qiacute-ru-m[a]4rsquo) [hellip] ⸢i⸣-te-e URU-šu5rsquo) [hellip a-n]a šit-mur ANŠEKURRAM[EŠ]6rsquo) [hellip]-ti LUacute x(e) qa ma

7rsquo) [hellip di-ik-ta()-š]uacute-nu ma-at-t[u]8rsquo) [hellip is]-⸢ki⸣-ru IacuteD9rsquo) [hellip di-tal-l]i-iš iq-mu-uacute-m[a]10rsquo) [x x (x) ina māt] a-ma-at-te iš-ku-nu-m[a]11rsquo) [hellip] x šaacute-a-šuacute ga-du kim-ti-[šuacute]12rsquo) [a-na qeacute-re]b URU-ia aš-šurki ⸢ub-lu⸣-[ni]

Side C1rsquo) [hellip] x [hellip]2rsquo) [hellip]-ni-ia [hellip]3rsquo) [šaacute ina tukul]-ti daš-šur E[N-ia hellip]4rsquo) [at-ta]-la-ku ugrave mim-mu-uacute [(ša) ina māt (ḫ)am(m)at(t)e amurrecirc ()]5rsquo) [e-tep]-pu-šuacute aacuteš-ṭu-ra ṣ[e-ru-uš-šuacute-(un)]6rsquo) [ištēn i]na KUR ḫa-am-ma-te 1-en ina [hellip]7rsquo) [ištēn] ⸢i⸣-na uruḫa-ta-r[i-ka (hellip)]8rsquo) [ištēn i]na uruKUR-ʾa-a 1-en ina [hellip]9rsquo) [ušziz()] a-lik ar-ki ru ri x [hellip]

Side B ldquo[hellip] hellip for water [hellip] itshis [hellip] they made scarce and [hellip] alongside his city [hellip] forhorses to show their mettle [hellip] hellip [hellip] a major [military defeat] of them [(hellip) and] blocked upthe river [with their corpses hellip] they burned [hellip] turning them into [ashes] They established[devastation] in the land of Hamath and [hellip] hellip They brought him (Yau-birsquodi) together with[his] family [to] my city Ashur (lines 13rsquoff mention offerings for the god Assur)rdquoSide C ldquo[hellip] hellip [hellip] myhellip [hellip What I had] carried out with faith in Assur my lord [hellip] andeverything [I] had done [in the land of Hamath Amurru] I inscribed upon [itthem One(stele) I had erected] in the land of Hamath one in [hellip one] in the city of Ḫatarikka [hellipone] in the city of KURʾa (and) one in [hellip] hellip the one who goes after hellip [hellip] (lines 10rsquoff includeblessings and curses)rdquo

While it is regrettable that this interesting text is so poorly preserved enough isextant to determine as others have beforesup2sup1 that Sargon did apparently not leadthe campaign in 720 BCE against the Westland himself In all likelihood he par-ticipated instead in the summer of that year in the fruitless fight in the east

Edition Grant Frame ldquoThe Tell Acharneh Stela of Sargon II of Assyriardquo in Tell Acharneh1998ndash2004 ed Michel Fortin (Turnhout Brepols 2006) 49ndash68 esp 49ndash52 See eg Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 421

62 Eckart Frahm

against the Elamites at Der briefly described in the Ashur Charter and severallater inscriptions and also mentioned and ascribed to Sargonrsquos second yearin the Babylonian Chronicle The 3rd person plural forms on Side B of the TellAsharneh stele make it quite clear that the Western campaign was conductedby Assyrian generalssup2sup2

We learn moreover that the battle fought between the Assyrian troops andthose of Yau-birsquodi involved fighting in and around a city with a nearby riverclearly Qarqar on the Orontessup2sup3 and major bloodshed and destruction Samariais not mentioned in the preserved part of the text but it is feasible that the citywas among the places where Sargon according to the text on Side C erected var-ious victory stelae

Another city where this apparently happened was Kullania modern TellTayinat on the northern bend of the Orontes River Fragments of a Sargonstele found there were recently published by Lauinger and Batiuk Whetherthe text was written in the immediate aftermath of the quelling of the Yau-birsquodi revolt is not certain but likely The portion on Samaria reads as follows

Text 3 Tell Tayinat Stele (covers events up to 720 BCE())sup2⁴

1rsquo) [hellip] x [hellip]2rsquo) [hellip i-n]a uruqar-qa-ri ⸢uacute⸣-[paḫ-ḫir-ma (hellip)]3rsquo) [(hellip) ušbalkit() it]-ti-ia urua[r-pad-da ṣimirra (hellip)]4rsquo) [(hellip) dimašqu (hellip) urus]a-mi-ri-i-n[a hellip]5rsquo) [mārē aššur ša () ina qeacute-r]eb KUR a-ma-te Eacutekit x [hellip bašucirc kī ištēn ()]6rsquo) [iddūk qātī () aš-ši-m]a daš-šur MAN DINGIRME[Š (hellip) aššu (hellip)]7rsquo) [(hellip) kašād māt a-ma]-te sa(text IR)-kap Idi[a-uacute-bi-irsquo-di hellip]8rsquo) [(hellip) māt amurrecirc amḫur () uacute]-ma-ʾe-er-ma [hellip]

Melville The Campaigns of Sargon II 61 237 n 23 has suggested a slightly different scenar-io In her view Sargon first participated in the battle of Der and then travelled to the West wherehe took part in the later stages of the campaign of 720 BCE One of Melvillersquos arguments is that arelief in Room V of Sargonrsquos palace in Khorsabad depicts the king in his chariot at Ekron Mel-ville cannot be proven wrong but some doubts remain not least because the dating of the As-syrian intervention at Ekron to 720 BCE is not completely certain One can also ask if the reliefreally provides an accurate representation of what had actually happened Qarqar is usually identified with modern Qarqūr which may well be correct but one cannotentirely exclude the possibility that the city was actually located at Tell Asharneh as argued byNadav Narsquoaman ldquoQarqar = Tell cAsharnehrdquo NABU 1999 no 89 For a discussion see Ariel BaggDie Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 1 Die Levante (Wiesbaden Reichert2007) 194ndash95 Edition Jacob Lauinger and Stephen Batiuk ldquoA Stele of Sargon II at Tell Tayinatrdquo ZA 105(2015) 54ndash68 The fragment of interest to us is A 27863


9rsquo) [hellip] ⸢a-duk⸣ x [hellip]10rsquo) [hellip] x [hellip]

Notes to the text For the tentative new restorations in lines 2rsquo ndash3rsquo and the passage in gen-eral see Text 11 (ldquoMosul Annalsrdquo) ll 6ndash 11 For lines 6rsquondash8rsquo see Text 1 (Ashur Charter)ll 22ndash24 for line 9rsquo see perhaps Text 12 (Khorsabad Display Inscription) l 35 EN ḫi-iṭ-ṭia-duk-ma The size of the gaps at the beginnings and ends of the lines is uncertain

ldquoHe (Yau-birsquodi) gathered [hellip troops hellip] in the city of Qarqar [and prompted hellip (perhaps thevast land of Amurru) to rebel] against me Arpad [Ṣimirra (hellip) Damascus (hellip)] and Sama-ria [hellip (perhaps he brought to his side) hellip He killed the citizens of Assyria all together whowere in] the midst of the land of Hamath hellip [hellip][I lifted my hand(s) and implored] the god Assur [(to help me) conquer the land of] Hamathoverthrow Yau-birsquodi [and hellip the land of Amurru] I ordered [hellip (perhaps my hellip troops hellip)] Ikilled [those who had committed crimes])rdquosup2⁵

The three texts discussed so far were in all likelihood written towards the end orshortly after the Western campaign of 720 BCE Some four years later Sargoncommissioned two additional texts that mention Yau-birsquodirsquos revolt and its conse-quences One is the Najafehabad Stele erected in 716 BCE by Assyrian troops inthe eastern Zagros region Mostly devoted to the 716 Assyrian campaign to theEast this text also provides some limited information on earlier military ven-tures including the Western campaign of 720 The account is very damagedbut seems similar to the versions in three Sargon texts to be discussed later(Texts 10ndash 12) I am grateful to Andreas Fuchs and Grant Frame for providingme with their joint new ndash but still unpublished ndash transliteration of the passagebased on a study of a squeeze of the inscription and to Fuchs for sending me histranslationsup2⁶ Much remains unfortunately unclear

Text 4 Najafehabad Stele (covers events up to 716 BCE)sup2⁷

Reverse4) (x x) x x [m]⸢ia⸣-uacute-bi-irsquo-di ⸢luacute⸣kur⸢ḫa⸣-am-ma-ta-a-⸢a⸣ x x x x (x) [hellip]sup2⁸5) [(x)] (x x) x x x x x x x x x x x x ma x uacute kid x x x x (x) [hellip]

The traces in line 9rsquo are difficult to read A few of the new readings offered in the following have been established by myself basedon the photos of the text published by Louis D Levine Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae from Iran (Tor-onto Royal Ontario Museum 1972) pl VIII and IX Most of them are however owed to Fuchsand Framewho will publish their collaborative work on the Najafehabad Stele in the near futurein volume 2 of the series The Royal Inscription of the Neo-Assyrian Period Edition Levine Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae from Iran 25ndash50

64 Eckart Frahm

6) (x) x a x (x) x x ti x (x) nu luacute⸢EacuteRIN⸣MEŠ ⸢uacute⸣-pa-⸢ḫir⸣-ma ma-mit ⸢DINGIRMEŠ GALMEŠ⸣(x) [hellip]

7) (x) x di x ⸢uacute-ter⸣-ma ⸢a-na⸣ e-mu-qi-šuacute it-ta-⸢kil⸣ um-ma-na-at AN⸢ŠAacuteR⸣ gap-š[aacute-a-ti ad-kema hellip]

8) x (x) ⸢i di⸣ gi-ip-⸢šu⸣ x (x) it-ba-a giš⸢GIGIR⸣ pit-ḫal-lu ANŠE⸢KURMEŠ⸣ ina uruab x [hellip]9) [(x)] ⸢ma⸣ bu x (x) ri aacuteš ⸢di⸣ x x (x) x-šuacute-nu IacuteD na-ba-lu ⸢na⸣-ba-si-iš ⸢aṣ-ru⸣-up a x x

[hellip]10) (x) ⸢id eacutedan uru dušuacute⸣ x (x) [u]na ⸢tuli⸣ (x) x x ⸢kan⸣ ina giša-ši-bi ⸢dan⸣-ni ⸢BAgraveD-

šuacute kar⸣-pa-ti-⸢iš uacute⸣-pa-⸢ri⸣-[ir-ma hellip uruqarqaru()]11) [(ina)] ⸢dNE⸣GI aq-mu šaacute-a-⸢šuacute a⸣-di ⸢kim-ti⸣-šuacute luacutemun-daḫ-ṣi-šuacute a-⸢na⸣ UR[U]-⸢ia aš⸣-

šurki ub-la ina IGI ⸢KAacute⸣GAL [hellip mašakšu akūṣ () (hellip)]12) (x) x x x ⸢šu⸣-utndashluacute⸢SAGMEŠ⸣-ia a-na luacuteENndashNAM-⸢uacute⸣-ti UGU-šuacute-nu aacuteš-kun KUR ḫa-am-

ma-⸢ta⸣ (‐)[a-a hellip]13) (x x) x ⸢id kuki⸣ x (x) helliphellip

Notes to the text At the end of line 8 it would have been tempting to read uruqar-qa-[ri hellip]sup2⁹but the sign after URU really seems to be AB and not QAR Perhaps one should read uruab-tam-[ma-ku hellip] and assume that the city in question is to be identified with Aštammaku aldquoroyal cityrdquo of Hamath during the reign of Shalmaneser III whose name is once writtenuruab-ta-ma-kusup3⁰ There remains much uncertainty however Line 11 is restored after Text12 (Khorsabad Display Inscription) l 35 (it cannot be excluded that a-ku-uṣ belongs atthe beginning of line 12)

ldquo(In my second regnal year (palucirc)) helliphellip Yau-birsquodi of Hamath hellip [hellip] helliphellip [hellip] hellip he gathered histroops and [transgressed] the oath (sworn) by the great gods [hellip] he brought to his side andtrusted in his own force[I mobilized] the vast troops of Assur [hellip] hellip massed body hellip he rose chariots cavalry andhorses in the city of Abhellip [hellip] helliphellip their hellip (with their blood) I dyed the river and the dry landred like red wool hellip [hellip] helliphellip with a mighty battering ram I smashed its wall like clay pots[hellip] I destroyed [the city of Qarqar] by fire I brought him (Yau-birsquodi) together with his familyand his fighters to my city Ashur and in front of the [hellip] Gate [I flayed him hellip]hellip I appointed (one of ()) my eunuchs over them to serve as provincial governor The landof Hamath (or the citizens of Hamath) [hellip] hellip (followed by an account of Sargonrsquos ldquothirdpalucircrdquo)rdquo

Unlike the Tell Asharneh Stele the Najafehabad Stele ascribes all agency for theWestern campaign of 720 BCE to Sargon alone It claims moreover that in thewake of the campaign an Assyrian eunuch was appointed as provincial gover-

The poorly preserved lines preceding line 4 could have accommodated an account of the bat-tle of Der but certainly not one of the conquest of Samaria see Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711vChr 85 See the references to Qarqar in Texts 3 10 11 and 12 A Kirk Grayson Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858ndash754 BC) (TorontoToronto University Press 1996) A010216 75rsquo For further references and possible locations seeBagg Die Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 1 33ndash34


nor over Hamath Since this measure is not yet mentioned in the Ashur Charterand the Asharneh Stele (Texts 1 and 2)sup3sup1 it seems likely that it was not imple-mented in 720 BCE but shortly thereafter ndash when exactly remains unclear

While later inscriptions (see below Texts 7() 8 and 9) claim that Sargonalso appointed one of his eunuchs as governor of Samaria it is noteworthythat the Najafehabad Stele does apparently not yet include such a statementsup3sup2Considering the emphasis the account in the Stele puts on the events in Hamaththis omission does however not necessarily mean that such an appointmenthad not been made in the meantime

A rather startling new claim is made in a second Sargon inscription com-posed around 716 BCE the so-called Juniper Palace Inscription from Kalḫu incentral Assyria After an introductory passage with royal titles and epithetsthe text characterizes the king as follows

Text 5 Juniper Palace Text (covers events up to 716 BCE)sup3sup3

7) NUN na-arsquo-du šaacute ina re-bit BAgraveDANki it-ti mdḫum-ba-ni-ga-aacuteš LUGAL KUR e-lam-ti in-nam-ru-ma iš-ku-nu taḫ-ta-šuacute

8) mu-šak-niš KUR ia-uacute-du šaacute a-šar-šuacute ru-uacute-qu na-si-iḫ KUR ḫa-am-ma-te šaacute mdia-uacute-bi-irsquo-dima-lik-šuacute-nu ik-šu-du ŠUII-šuacute

ldquoExalted prince who met (in battle) with Humbanigaš king of Elam in the district of Derand defeated him subduer of the land of Judah which lies far away who deported (thepeople of) Hamath who captured Yau-birsquodi their king with his handsrdquo

The Juniper Palace Inscription has some chronological inconsistencies but thebetter known episodes to which it alludes in the aforementioned passage all oc-curred in 720 BCE Therefore and because the text covers only events up to 716

The Tell Tayinat Stele (Text 3) is so damaged that one cannot establish whether it dealt withthe Assyrian efforts to reorganize the political landscape of the Westland At first glance the strange plural writing luacute⸢SAGMEŠ⸣-ia and the possessive suffix -šunu inelišunu both in line 12 could be taken as indicating that Sargon appointed governors in otherWestern polities as well (thus Andreas Fuchs ldquoDie Assyrer und das Westlandrdquo Or 83 (2014)243ndash57 esp 250) but the sign sequence ⸢SAGMEŠ⸣ apart from not being absolutely certainis perhaps rather a late echo of the dual-based Middle Assyrian term for eunuch šandashrēšēnwhile elišunu apparently referring to the people is also found in texts that clearly deal onlywith Hamath (see below Texts 13ndash15) Copy Hugo Winckler Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons nach den Papierabklatschen und Originalenneu herausgegeben (Leipzig Hinrichrsquosche Buchhandlung 1889) vol 2 pl 48 For a discussion ofthe text and a partial new edition see Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Portion of Sargonrsquos Nim-rud Inscriptionrdquo SAAB 8 (1994) 17ndash20

66 Eckart Frahm

BCE which is long before Sargonrsquos next recorded major campaign to the Levantin 711 BCEsup3⁴ it is generally assumed that the reference to Sargon being ldquothe sub-duer of Judahrdquo refers to the campaign of 720 BCE as well In the Khorsabad An-nals to be discussed later (Text 710) Sargon claims that the fight against theenemy coalition led by Yau-birsquodi was immediately followed by an Assyrian attackon Gaza in southern Palestine and it is possible that the altercation with Judahhappened as the Assyrian troops moved southwards in this direction or backfrom theresup3⁵ Despite the strong language used by Sargon in the Juniper PalaceInscription it is evident that Judah did not lose its independence in the courseof these events but the Assyrian actions clearly left an impression on the Ju-deansWhen in 711 BCE Yamani of Ashdod sought to implicate Judah in anotherrebellion the Judean king did not oblige him adopting instead a pro-Assyrianstancesup3⁶

Based on the reference to Judah in the Juniper Palace Inscription both An-dreas Fuchs and I tentatively suggested years ago that the fragmentary ldquoAzekahinscriptionrdquosup3⁷ which describes an Assyrian attack on the Judean city of Azekah ndashand fighting elsewhere in the region ndash at some point during the reign of King He-

Note however that column ii of the Assur fragment VA 8424 (see Fuchs Die Annalen desJahres 711 vChr 28ndash29 57) refers to the deportation of members of an unknown people tosouthern Palestine in Sargonrsquos ldquofifth palucircrdquo ndash a chronological marker probably referring inthis text to 716 BCE Bas reliefs in Room V of Sargonrsquos palace in Khorsabad show the Philistine cities of Amqar-runa (Biblical Ekron) and Gabbutunu (Biblical Gibbethon) plus several additional cities amongthem Barsquoil-gazara and Sinu (see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 277 364) thelatter of which is to be identified with Tell Siyānu 50 km north of Arwad Amqarruna and Gab-butunu might likewise have been attacked in the course of the Assyrian armyrsquos move to southernPalestine in 720 BCE (thus among others John Malcolm Russell The Writing on the Wall Studiesin the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns1999) 114ndash23) but it cannot be excluded that they were targeted some other time perhaps aslate as in 711 BCE It has been suggested that one of the cities depicted in Room V for which noepigraph is extant is Samaria (thus Norma Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukin andSargon IIrsquos Western Campaignsrdquo TA 21 (1994) 255ndash75) but Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 476correctly points to the uncertainty of this proposal For additional discussion see the referenceslisted above in note 2 See Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711 vChr 44ndash46 73ndash74 id ldquoDie Assyrer und das West-landrdquo 248ndash49 The most recent edition with ample bibliography is by A Kirk Grayson and Jamie NovotnyThe Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681 BC) Part 2 (Winona Lake IN Ei-senbrauns 2014) 350ndash52 no 1015 For the editio princeps of the rejoined fragments see NadavNarsquoaman ldquoSennacheribrsquos lsquoLetter to Godrsquo on His Campaign to Judahrdquo BASOR 214 (1974) 25ndash39


zekiah might describe events that happened in 720 BCEsup3⁸ This idea did howev-er not find widespread support A few years ago Nadav Narsquoaman providedstrong albeit perhaps not entirely conclusive arguments against it reaffirminghis earlier contention that the Azekah inscription deals with the famous attackon Judah conducted by Sennacherib in 701 BCEsup3⁹

If Narsquoaman is right there would be no other references to the subjugation ofJudah in Sargonrsquos inscriptions which would make the one in the Juniper PalaceInscription even more puzzling One way to deal with the problem would be toassume that the scribe who composed the text somehow confused the Kingdomof Israel with the Kingdom of Judah but there is no parallel for such an errorand the characterization of Judah as ldquoa far-away landrdquo seems at odds with theidea

It is worth noting on the other hand that the next Sargon inscription avail-able to us the kingrsquos Cylinder Inscription from Khorsabad which covers eventsup to 713 BCE in a non-chronological sequence briefly refers to a defeat over Is-rael while completely ignoring Judah as if the former had replaced the latterAfter alluding with a phrase identical to the one used in the Juniper Palace In-scription to the battle of Der and to skirmishes against Aramaean tribes in theAssyro-Babylonian border region (which we know also took place in 720 BCE)the text characterizes the Assyrian king as follows

Text 6 Khorsabad Cylinder (covers events up to 713 BCE)⁴⁰

19) mu-ri-ib KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a rap-ši ša i-na urura-pi-ḫi BAD5BAD5-uacute KUR mu-uṣ-ri GAR-nu-ma Iḫa-a-nu-nu LUGAL uruḫa-zi-te ka-mu-us-su uacute-še-ri-ba uruaš-šur

Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 314ndash15 Eckart Frahm Einleitung in die San-herib-Inschriften (Vienna Institut fuumlr Orientalistik 1997) 229ndash32 One of my main arguments forascribing the text to the reign of Sargon was that its language and style are highly reminiscent ofSargonrsquos ldquoLetter to the god Assurrdquo Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoSargon IIrsquos Second Palucirc according to the Khorsabad Annalsrdquo TA 34(2007) 165ndash70 Narsquoaman argues quite convincingly that in Sargonrsquos Khorsabad Annals only13 lines and not 26 are missing from the account of the western campaign conducted in thekingrsquos second palucirc This seems not enough to accommodate the lengthy report about an attackagainst Judah that Fuchs and Frahm had suggested might once have been included at this pointndash even though a short reference to such an attack would still fit into the gap Narsquoaman also pro-vides some other important arguments for dating the Azekah episode to 701 BCE Attempts todate it to 712711 BCE or the years after 689 BCE seem altogether unconvincing Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 29ndash44 289ndash96 For a similartext see Cyril J Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954) 173ndash201esp 198ndash201 ll 17 22

68 Eckart Frahm

20) ka-šid luacuteta-mu-di luacutei-ba-di-di luacutemar-si-i-ma-ni luacuteḫa-ia-pa-a šaacute si-it-ta-šuacute-nu in-neacute-et-qa-am-ma uacute-šar-mu-uacute qeacute-reb KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a

ldquo(Sargon) the one who made the vast land of Bīt-Ḫumria (ldquoHouse of Omrirdquo ie Israel)tremble who inflicted a defeat on Egypt in the city of Rapiḫu who had Ḫanunu theking of Gaza enter Assur in fetters who conquered the Tamudi Ibadidi Marsimani andḪayapacirc and had the rest of them (once) they had been resettled dwell in the land ofBīt-Ḫumriardquo

This is the first time in an extant Sargon inscription that some kind of punish-ment of Israel is mentioned even though it remains unclear what Sargon exactlymeans when he claims to have made Israel ldquotremblerdquo It is noteworthy that theremarks on Bīt-Ḫumria are separated in the Cylinder Inscription by several linesfrom those on the violent suppression of the revolt of Yau-birsquodi (now for the firsttime called Ilu-birsquodi) which is found later in the text

25) hellip na-si-iḫ šur-uš KUR a-ma-at-te ša ma-šak mdi-lu-bi-irsquo-di ḫa-am-ma-rsquoi-i iṣ-ru-pu na-ba-si-iš

ldquo(Sargon) hellip the one who tore out the root of the land of Hamath who dyed the skin of Ilu-birsquodi the rebel ruler (ḫammārsquou possibly wordplay with ḫamatāyu ldquoHamatheanrdquo) red likenabāsu-woolrdquo⁴sup1

The sudden emphasis on the defeat of Bīt-Ḫumria (ldquoHouse of Omrirdquo) in the Cyl-inder Inscription is surprising if one takes into account that the earlier Sargontexts have nothing to say about it One wonders which specific event is actuallyalluded to here An episode in 720 BCE not recorded in Sargonrsquos earliest inscrip-tions Such a scenario is to some extent suggested by the fact that the CylinderInscription juxtaposes the Bīt-Ḫumria episode with the Assyrian victory over Ḫa-nunu of Gaza dated in Sargonrsquos Khorsabad Annals (Text 710) to the kingrsquos sec-ond regnal year Since the campaign against Gaza is not mentioned in Sargonrsquos

The exact meaning of this phrase is somewhat unclear At first glance the point seems to bethat Ilu-birsquodirsquos skin became ldquobloody redrdquo in the process of the flaying to which his body was sub-jected But Erica Reiner has pointed to a statement by Lactantius according to which the skin ofthe Roman emperor Valerian after he had been flayed ldquowas dyed with vermilion (infecta rubrocolore) and placed in the temple of the god of the Barbariansrdquo as a reminder of the triumphalvictory the Sasanians had achieved over him and his Roman troops Something similar she sug-gests might have been done with Ilu-birsquodirsquos skin Erica Reiner ldquoThe Reddling of ValerianrdquoClQ 56 (2006) 325ndash29 see also Shiyanthi Thavapalan The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopo-tamia (PhD Dissertation Yale University 2017) 69 Drawing on Reiner David Woods ldquoLactan-tiusValerian and Halophilic BacteriardquoMnemosyne 61 (2008) 479ndash81 suggested that Valerianrsquosskin became red because the Sasanians treated it with salt containing halophilic bacteria whenthey tried to preserve it


earliest inscriptions one wonders however whether it might not in fact haveoccurred some time after 720 BCE and the same could apply to the assault onBīt-Ḫumria The deportation to Israel of the various Arab tribes mentioned inline 20 of the Cylinder Inscription clearly happened long after 720 BCE ndash in Sar-gonrsquos Khorsabad Annals (Text 710 ll 120ndash 123) it is dated to the kingrsquos seventhpalucirc that is 715 BCE⁴sup2

There is yet another possibility however the remark about Bīt-Ḫumria couldrefer to an incident that happened before 720 BCE This last scenario is chieflysuggested by Sargonrsquos aforementioned Annals from Khorsabad a long chrono-logically organized inscription from late in the kingrsquos reign which covers eventsup to 707 BCE (an earlier annalistic text Sargonrsquos Annals from 711 BCE is un-fortunately poorly preserved with the accounts of his first regnal years miss-ing)⁴sup3 The Khorsabad Annals describe an attack on Samaria that is datedquite unexpectedly to the kingrsquos accession year Regrettably the passage is poor-ly preserved

Text 7 Khorsabad Annals (covers events up to 707 BCE)⁴⁴ Samaria

10) helliphellip i-na S[AG šarrūtiya ša ina kussecirc šarrūti ušibuma ()]11) [agecirc bēlūti annapruma () (hellip) luacute(-uru)sa-me-r]i-na-a-a [ša itti šarri nakiriya (or ālik

pāniya) ana lā epēš ardūti ()]12) [u lā našecirc bilti idbubū igmelūma (or ikmelūma) ēpušū tāḫāzu () ina emūq DN(N) helliphellip]13) [ helliphellip ]14) [helliphellip mu-š]ak-ši-i[d] er-net-ti-ia i[t-ti-šu-nu amdaḫiṣma () helliphellip]15) [27 lim 2 me 8090 nīšē āšib libbišu (adi narkabātišunu u ilāni tiklīšun) aacute]š-lu-la

50 gišGIGIRMEŠ ki-ṣir šar-ru-ti-ia i-na [libbišunu akṣurma sittātišunu ()]16) [ina qereb māt aššur ušaṣbit () samerina uacute-t]er-ma UGU šaacute pa-na uacute-še-šib(or me)

UNMEŠ KURKURMEŠ ki-šit-[ti qātēya ina libbi ušērib šūt-rēšiya]

On the date(s) of Sargonrsquos (and possible later) deportations to Samaria see Nadav Narsquoamanand Ran Zadok ldquoAssyrian Deportations to the Province of Samerina in the Light of Two Cunei-form Tablets from Tell Hadidrdquo TA 27 (2000) 159ndash88 For references in Sargonrsquos inscriptions todeportations of various other people to ldquoḪattirdquo Amurru Hamath and Damascus see GrantFrame ldquoA lsquoNewrsquo Cylinder Inscription of Sargon II of Assyria from Melidrdquo in God(s) TreesKings and Scholars Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola ed MikkoLuukko Raija Mattila and Saana Svaumlrd (Helsinki The Finnish Oriental Society 2009) 65ndash82esp 77 Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711 vChr 85 contends that the 711 BCE edition (whose pre-served section dates all of Sargonrsquos military accomplishments back by one year assigning eventsof the fifth palucirc to the fourth for example) did probably not yet include the episode of the con-quest of Samaria His arguments seem persuasive even though some uncertainty remains Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 82ndash188

70 Eckart Frahm

17) [bēlndashpāḫati elišunu aškunma biltu] ma-da-at-tu ki-i ša aacuteš-šu-ri e‐mid‐su‐nu‐ti k[a‐ri mātmuṣur kangu aptema]

Notes to the text Line 10ndash 11 tentatively restored after Text 1 (Ashur Charter) l 16 the otherequally uncertain restorations follow Text 8 (Nimrud Prism) iv 25ndash41 and Text 9 (Khorsa-bad Display Inscription) ll 23ndash25 (see Tadmor JCS 1234) Becking The Fall of Samaria39ndash44 questioned the restoration of luacute(-uru)sa-me-r]i-na-a-a in line 11 but the parallels espe-cially with the Nimrud Prism leave little doubt that it is correct As kindly pointed out to meby Grant Frame shortly before the present volume went to press there is some evidencethat the alleged lines 12 and 13 actually do not exist This would eliminate the long gap in-dicated for line 13 The restorations suggested for lines 11 and 12 could be distributed ontolines 11 and 14 but should be considered as highly conjecturalWith regard to line 14 notethat one of Sargonrsquos new gates in Khorsabad bore the name Šamaš-mušakšid-ernettiya Thephrase UGU šaacute pa-na uacute-še-ME in line 16 is odd and it remains somewhat unclear whetherone should read the last sign as -šib or as -me

ldquohellip In [my] accession year [when I had settled on my royal throne and had been crownedwith the lordly crown (helliphellip)] the people of Samaria [who had spoken and come to an agree-ment with a king who was my enemy to no longer do service and no longer bring tribute (orwho had hellip with a king who preceded me to no longer do service and no longer bring tributehad become angry) and had done battle ndash with the strength provided by the god(s) helliphelliphelliphellip]who grant(s) my wishes [I fought] with [them 2728027290 of the people living in its (Sa-mariarsquos) midst (together with their chariots and the gods in whom they trusted)] I led awayFrom [their midst I gathered together] fifty chariot (crew)s for my royal contingent [Therest of them I settled within Assyria] I resettled [Samaria] making it more (populous)than before [I had] people from (various) lands I had conquered [enter it One of my eu-nuchs I installed over them as a provincial governor] I imposed [tribute] and taxes uponthem as (if they were) Assyrians [I opened the sealed] quay [of the land of Egypt] helliprdquo⁴⁵

My restorations of the passage just quoted are largely based on another late Sar-gon text which is known from two clay prisms from Nimrud Here the reportabout Samaria of which crucial lines are again damaged occurs in a non-chro-nological sequence of accounts of Sargonrsquos military endeavors after a descrip-tion of the campaign against Carchemish (which happened in 717 BCE)

Text 8 Nimrud Prism (covers events up to 706 BCE)⁴⁶ col iv

25) [luacute(-uru)sa]-me-ri-na-a-a ša it-ti LUGAL26) [nakiri(or ālik pāni)]-ia a-na la e-peš ar-du-ti

As already pointed out later in the Annals in a report about the seventh palucirc (= 715 BCE)Sargon claims that he settled various Arab tribes including the Tamudi in Samaria (ina urusa-me-ri-na uacute-še-šib) (Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 110 ll 120ndash23) Edition Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon IIrdquo 173ndash98 I have not been able to collate thetext


27) [u lā na]-še-e bil-ti28) [id-bu-b]u([x x (x)] ) ig(or ik)-me-lu-ma e-pu-šuacute ta-ḫa-zu29) [i-n]a e-muq DINGIRMEŠ GALMEŠ E[N]MEŠ-ia30) [i]t-ti-šuacute-nu am-da-ḫi-[iṣ-ma]31) [2]0+7 lim 2 me 80 UNMEŠ a-di gišGIG[IRMEŠ-šuacute-nu]32) ugrave DINGIRMEŠ ti-ik-li-šuacute-un šal-la-t[i-iš]33) am-nu 2 me gišGIGIRMEŠ ki-ṣir LUGA[L-ti-ia]34) ina ligraveb-bi-šuacute-nu ak-ṣur-⸢ma⸣35) si-it-ta-ti-šuacute-nu36) i-na qeacute-reb KUR aš-šurki uacute-šaacute-aṣ-bit37) urusa-me-ri-na uacute-ter-ma UGU šaacute pa-ni38) uacute-še-šib(or me) UNMEŠ KURKUR ki-šit-ti ŠUII-ia39) i-na ligraveb-bi uacute-še-rib luacutešu-utndashSAG-ia40) luacuteENndashNAM UGU-šuacute-nu aacuteš-kun-ma41) it-ti UNMEŠ KUR aš-šurki am-nu-šuacute-nu-ti

Notes to the text Line 28 The reading [id-bu-b]u ig-me-lu (which would make perfect senseif the passage is indeed about a Samarian conspiracy with an ldquoenemy kingrdquo) is new andeven though uncertain in my view the only feasible one that has so far been suggestedTadmor restored [a-ḫa-me]š ig-me-lu-ma⁴⁷ but this seems at odds with Akkadian semanticsDalley proposed to read [ibbalkitūikpudū] ikmilūma⁴⁸ but if the copy is accurate this re-storation cannot be correct either⁴⁹ Line 33 In her contribution to this volume Karen Rad-ner argues that the number 200 refers to chariot crewswhereas the number 50 in the Khor-sabad Annals (Text 7 line 15) is used to count the chariots taken from Samaria

ldquoThe people of Samaria who had spoken and come to an agreement with a king [who was]my [enemy] to no longer do service and no longer bring tribute (or who had hellip with a king[who preceded] me to no longer do service and no longer bring tribute had become angry)and had done battle ndash with the strength provided by the great gods my lords I fought withthem 27280 people together with [their] chariots and the gods in whom they trusted Icounted [as] spoil I gathered from their midst 200 chariot (crew)s for my royal contingentThe rest of them I settled within Assyria I resettled Samaria making it more (populous)than before I had people from (various) lands I had conquered enter into it One of my eu-nuchs I installed over them as a provincial governor and I counted them among the peopleof Assyria (followed by a report about the opening of the ldquosealed quayrdquo of Egypt)rdquo

The Samaria accounts of the Khorsabad Annals and the Nimrud Prism are sim-ilar but not identical which means that the restorations offered above for the for-mer on the basis of the latter remain somewhat uncertain Among the notewor-thy features of the texts is the much discussed and theologically intriguing

Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 34 Stephanie Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sar-gon IIrdquo Iraq 47 (1985) 31ndash48 esp 36 Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 469ndash70 followed Dalley and tentatively translated ldquowhoagreed [and plotted] with a king [hostile to] merdquo

72 Eckart Frahm

statement (preserved only in the Nimrud Prism) that Sargon took away ldquothe godsof Samariardquo Whether it is simply a topos added to the account as a rhetorical-ideological flourish or a reference to an actual event cannot be determined withcertainty it is worth mentioning though that the statement occurs only here⁵⁰Also remarkable is that the two texts mention the incorporation of substantialnumbers of Samarian chariot (crew)s into the Assyrian army The significanceof this segment of the Samarian troops is confirmed by references to equestrianofficers from Samaria in archival texts from Nimrud from the late eighth centu-ry⁵sup1 and by Shalmaneser IIIrsquos Kurkh inscription which claims that the Israeliteshad provided 2000() chariots for the army assembled for the battle of Qarqar in853 BCE⁵sup2

One key problem with the passage in the Nimrud Prism is to establish wheth-er Sargon claims in line 26 that the people of Samaria rebelled during the reignldquoof a king who preceded merdquo that is Shalmaneser V or conspired with ldquoa kingwho was my enemyrdquo that is Yau-birsquodi From a grammatical and semantic pointof view both restorations itti šarri ālik pāniya and itti šarri nakiriya are possibleSince the Khorsabad Annals date the episode to 722 BCE it may at first glanceseem more likely that the reference is to Sargonrsquos unloved predecessor andnot to Yau-birsquodi whose revolt apparently happened later⁵sup3 But things are not

Note however that 2Kgs 1834 (which is part of a message delivered by the Assyrian ChiefCupbearer to the people of Jerusalem in the name of King Sennacherib) seems to imply thatthe Assyrians had in fact once taken away ldquothe gods of Samariardquo For discussion see the ar-ticles by Uehlinger and Narsquoaman mentioned above in n 2 See Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotryrdquo 31ndash48 See A Kirk Grayson Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858ndash745 BC) (Tor-onto University of Toronto Press 1996) A0102 ii 91 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoTwo Notes on the Mono-lith Inscription of Shalmaneser III from Kurkhrdquo TA 3 (1976) 89ndash 106 esp 97ndash102 has arguedthat the ldquo2 limrdquo (ldquo2000rdquo) of the text may be a mistake for ldquo2 merdquo (ldquo200rdquo) Since the signsLIM and ME are quite similar this cannot be excluded but some uncertainty remains Graysonin his edition accepted the higher number Even if this should turn out to be mistaken the num-bers given for the Israelite chariot (crew)s in the aforementioned inscriptions still seem to sug-gest that Israel may have been a more eminent political player in the ninth and eighth centuriesBCE than many modern scholars inspired by ldquominimalistrdquo trends in recent biblical scholarshiphave come to believe There is also the issue that Sargonrsquos inscriptions otherwise rarely use the title šarru for Yau-birsquodi It is not quite correct however as claimed by Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotryrdquo 36 that the titleis not attested for him anywhere ndash some late Sargon texts (see below Texts 13ndash 15 l 53) do callYau-birsquodi šarru The Juniper Palace Inscription (Text 5) identifies him moreover as a malku atitle that is also found as pointed out by Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 471 in a passagethat mentions Yau-birsquodi together with other rulers (Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsa-


quite that clear ndash there is a way to interpret the evidence in line with the newrestoration suggested by me for iv 28 of the Nimrud Prism which presupposesthat the text does allude to the Yau-birsquodi revolt The compilers of the KhorsabadAnnals might have assigned a victory over Samaria achieved by the Assyrians inthe immediate aftermath of their defeat of Yau-birsquodi to Sargonrsquos accession yearperhaps conflating it with a successful earlier Assyrian attack late in the reignof Shalmaneser⁵⁴ while also adding remarks on actions taken against Samariain the aftermath of the events of 720 BCE

All this may seem unduly complicated but one needs to keep in mind asalready realized by Tadmor⁵⁵ that the ostensibly accurate chronological scaffold-ing of the Annals text is somewhat deceptive The resettling of Samaria and itsreorganization as a province for example occurred sometime after the quellingof the Yau-birsquodi revolt in 720 BCE the deportation of the Samarian people alsodescribed in the Bible (2Kgs 176)⁵⁶ and undoubtedly a historical reality⁵⁷ musthave taken place over a longer period of time if one considers the logistical chal-lenges⁵⁸ and the commercial contacts with Egypt likewise assigned by the An-nals to 722 BCE might in fact not have been initiated before 716 BCE⁵⁹

That the compilers of Sargonrsquos Annals combined military actions the Assyr-ians had undertaken against Samaria at different points in time in an account ofonly one year 722 BCE to fill out the gap left by the kingrsquos inability to campaign

bad 261 l 22) Clearly then Sargon and his scribes were not entirely unwilling to grant Yau-birsquodi royal status If Samaria was indeed conquered in 722 BCE (which we suggest below in section 3) thenSargon who assumed his office quite late in that year in the tenth month can hardly have ex-perienced this event as king If he participated at all in the assault on the city then it was as ageneral of Shalmaneser V Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 22ndash40 77ndash 100 The Biblical text claims that the Assyrian king placed the Israelites ldquoin Halah (Ḫalaḫḫu inthe Assyrian core area) Gozan (Guzana on the Khabur River) and Mediardquo See Radnerrsquos chapterin this volume For evidence for the enlistment of equestrian officers from Samaria by the Assyrians seeDalley ldquoForeign Chariotryrdquo 31ndash48 and the previous remarks While the Assyrian reportsabout the deportation of the Israelites are in essence trustworthy the accuracy of the numbersSargonrsquos inscriptions provide for the deported people can of course be questioned even thoughthey do not seem completely over the top see Marco De Odorico The Use of Numbers and Quan-tifications in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project1995) 52 114ndash 15 Radner in her contribution to this volume stresses that the Israelites cannot have arrived inMedia before 716 BCE It is of course possible that they stayed in a third location before theywere sent on their final journey See Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 35ndash36

74 Eckart Frahm

in the months following his accession⁶⁰ is therefore a possibility that deservesserious consideration It may well be that they initially produced an accountof this type for a text without chronological markers such as the NimrudPrism and then simply copied it perhaps with some adaptations into the An-nals If this is what happened one should not make too much of the fact thatthe Annals ascribe the Samarian rebellion to ldquothe people of Samariardquo and notto their king Given the deceptive chronology of the account one cannot excludethat the last king of Israel Hoshea remained in office until the end of the Assyr-ian siege presumably in 722 BCE and that the period in which the Samarianswere kingless only began thereafter⁶sup1

In Sargonrsquos so-called Display Inscription from Khorsabad like the NimrudPrism a late text that does not organize the kingrsquos military accomplishmentschronologically the victory over Samaria is described as well in an abbreviatedand slightly modified form

Text 9 Khorsabad Display Inscription (covers events up to 707 BCE)⁶sup2 Samaria

23) helliphellip urusa-me-ri-na al-me ak-šud24) 27 (var 24) lim 2 me 80 (var 90) UNMEŠ a-šib ŠAgrave-šuacute aacuteš-lu-la 50 gišGIGIRMEŠ ina ŠAgrave-

šuacute-nu ak-ṣur-ma ugrave si-it-tu-ti i-nu-šuacute-nu uacute-šaacute-ḫi-iz luacutešu-utndashSAG-ia UGU-šuacute-nu aacuteš-kun-maGUacuteUN LUGAL maḫ-re-e

25) e-mid-su-nu-ti helliphellip

ldquohellip I besieged and conquered Samaria 272802729024280 of the people living in its (Sa-mariarsquos) midst I led away From their midst I gathered together fifty chariot (crew)s I let therest take up their crafts again I installed over them one of my eunuchs and imposed onthem tribute (as under) a previous king helliprdquo

The account follows a short report about the battle of Der and precedes oneabout Ḫanunu of Gaza similar to the Annals It differs from all the other descrip-tions of Sargonrsquos confrontation with Samaria in two important respects One isthat it claims that Sargon ldquobesieged and conqueredrdquo Samaria at some point

That the scribes of Sargonrsquos Khorsabad Annals reassigned the battles the Assyrians fought inBabylonia in 720 BCE to Sargonrsquos ldquofirst yearrdquo ie 721 BCE seems obvious see Fuchs Die In-schriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 88ndash89 ll 18ndash23 The matter has a bearing on attempts to explain the confusing chronological data 2Kgs 17and 2Kgs 18 provide for Hoshea Much of this confusion would of course disappear if the state-ments made in 2Kgs 173ndash5 were to be understood for the most part as ldquoa theological commentin narrative formrdquo originating from the time when the books of Chronicles were composedwhich is the argument made by Levin in his chapter in this volume Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 189ndash248


This statement is in marked contrast to the Nimrud Prismwhich only talks aboutldquofightingrdquo (maḫāṣu) with the Samarians Particularly conspicuous is the use ofthe verb lamucirc ldquoto besiegerdquo a term that brings to mind the claim in 2Kgs 175(and 189) that ldquothe king of Assyriardquo (according to the context Shalmaneser) ldquobe-siegedrdquo ( רציו ) SamariaWhether we should consider the Display Inscriptionrsquos ref-erence to a siege of Samaria as a literary topos⁶sup3 a lie⁶⁴ or a statement that has ahistorical fundamentum in re ndash either in events from the end of the reign of Shal-maneser V or in incidents that happened in 720 BCE ndash remains somewhat un-clear

The second item setting the passage quoted above apart is the statement thata previous Assyrian king had once imposed tribute on Samaria This can only bea reference to either Tiglath-pileser III or Shalmaneser V

The texts from the last years of Sargonrsquos reign also include detailed accountsof the Yau-birsquodi episode In the Khorsabad Annals the episode is attributed toSargonrsquos second regnal year as in the Ashur Charter (and the NajafehabadStele) and follows an expanded report about the battle of Der and subsequentskirmishes with Aramaean tribesmen now ndash falsely ndash reassigned to the kingrsquosfirst regnal year

Text 10 Khorsabad Annals (covers events up to 707 BCE)⁶⁵ Hamath

23) helliphellip i-na 2-i BALA-ia mi-lu-b[i-iʾ-di kuramatāyu helliphellip]24) [helliphellip] DAGAL-tim i-na uruqar-qa-ri uacute-p[a]-ḫir-ma ma-mit [ilāni rabucircti helliphellip]25) [helliphellip arpadda ṣimirra uru]di-maš-q[a urus]a-me-ri-[na ittiya] u[š‐bal]‐k[it‐ma helliphellip]

ldquohellip In my second regnal year Ilu-birsquodi [of Hamath hellip] gathered [hellip] the vast [hellip] in the city ofQarqar and [hellip transgressed] the oath [(sworn) by the great gods hellip] He prompted [the citiesof Arpad Ṣimirra] Damascus and Samaria to rebel [against me and hellip]rdquo

Another version of an annalistic Sargon text only recently published and of un-certain date provides a slightly better preserved similar version of this episode

The expression alme akšud is extremely common in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions It should be noted that the Khorsabad Display Inscription includes at least one evident his-torical falsehood the claim in ll 133ndash34 that Sargon had managed to lead Marduk-apla-iddina IIand his family into captivity see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 351 n 479 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 82ndash188

76 Eckart Frahm

Text 11 Mosul Annals (covers events up to [hellip])⁶⁶

4) [helliphellip ina šanecirc] BALA-ia mdia-uacutendashbi-irsquo-di5) [amattāya lā bēl kussecirc lā šininti ekalli ša iana rērsquoucirct] UNMEŠ ši-mat-su la ši-mat6) [helliphellip uacute]-ri-d[a]m-ma it-ti luacuteERIMMEŠ ḫup-ši7) [helliphellipnāš ka-b]a-bu gišaz-⸢ma⸣-[ru]-uacute uacute-maš-šir-ma8) [helliphellip i-n]a uruqar-qa-ri š[a] i-na GUacute9) [arante hellip ṣāb(ē)() hellip rapašti() uacute-paḫ-ḫi]r-ma ma-mit DINGIRMEŠ GALMEŠ10) [hellip māt amurru (rapaštu) () ultu S]AGMEŠ-šaacute a-di še-p[i]-te-šaacute it-ti-ia11) [ušbalkitma pacirc ēdacirc ušaškinma ikṣura () tāḫāzu () (hellip) a]-na KUR aš-šurki UN[MEŠ]-šaacute

ḪUL-tu12) [lā ṭābtu ubarsquorsquoima (helliphellip) i]l-qa-a še-ṭu-uacute-tuacute u[ru]⸢ar⸣-[pad-da]13) [(uruhellip) uruṣimirra () (uruhellip) uruhellip]-tu urudi-maš-qu urusa-mir-i-n[a]14) [(upaḫḫirma) ana idišu uterra () (hellip) DU]MUMEŠ KUR aš-šurki ša i-na qeacute-reb15) [māt amatti () helliphellip] ba-šu-uacute ki-i DIŠ-en id-duk-ma16) [napištu ul ēzib helliphellip] ⸢a⸣-na dENZU LUGAL DINGIRMEŠ be-el KURKUR17) [helliphellip n]a-ki-ri mu-ḫal-liq za-ma-ni EN-ia18) [(helliphellip) qātāya aššima() aššu() kašād()] KUR a-ma-at-ti sa-kap19) [Yau-birsquodi helliphellip] MARTUki DAGAL-tim am-ḫur-ma20) [helliphellip]-uacute aacuteš-šu UNMEŠ-šuacute

Notes to the text Lines 15 and 19 restored after Text 3 (Tell Tayinat Stele) ll 5rsquo 7rsquo

ldquo[hellip In] my [second] regnal year Yau-birsquodi [of Hamath (who was) not the rightful throne-holder (who was) unfit for (living in) a palace and as whose] fate it had not been decreed[that he would (ever) shepherd] the people [hellip] came down [hellip] and together with a troop ofcommoners [hellip bearers of] shields and lances he left [hellip] In the city of Qarqar which is onthe bank [of the Orontes hellip] he gathered [the troops of the vast land of Amurru (or vasttroops)] and [transgressed] the oath (sworn) by the great gods [hellip] [He prompted the(vast) land of Amurru from] its upper end to its lower end [to rebel] against me [achievedunity (among its citizens) and prepared for battle (hellip)]Against the land of Assyria and her people [he (Yau-birsquodi) intended (to do)] evil [things thatwere not good (hellip)] and he treated (them) with insolence [He gathered] the cities of Arpad[(hellip) Ṣimirra (hellip) hellip]tu Damascus and Samaria [and brought them to his side (hellip)] He kil-led the citizens of Assyria who were present in [the land of Hamath hellip] all together [and leftno one alive (hellip)][I lifted my hands] to Sicircn the king of the gods and lord of the lands [hellip who vanquishes] thefoes and destroys the enemies my lord and implored him (to help me) [conquer] the landof Hamath overthrow [Yau-birsquodi and hellip] the wide land of Amurru (20) [hellip] they [hellip] Because(of) his people [hellip] (remainder of text lost)rdquo

Edition Eckart Frahm ldquoA Sculpted Slab with an Inscription of Sargon II Mentioning the Re-bellion of Yau-birsquodi of Hamathrdquo AoF 40 (2013) 42ndash54


This text from an unknown place in the Assyrian heartland⁶⁷ offers interestingadditional details about Yau-birsquodirsquos revolt especially with regard to the killingspree on which his supporters went but apart from apparently listing several ad-ditional cities involved in the insurrection it provides few new data on Samariaso there is no need to discuss it here at length The same applies to the reportabout the revolt in Sargonrsquos Display Inscription from Khorsabad which is sepa-rated from the Samaria episode by a number of other campaign accounts andseems to be more stereotypical than the annalistic texts

Text 12 Khorsabad Display Inscription (covers events up to 707 BCE)⁶⁸ Ha-math

33) mdia-uacute-bi-irsquo-di kura-ma-ta-a-a ṣa-ab ḫup-ši la EN gišGUZA luacuteḫat-tu-uacute lem-nu a-na LUGAL-ut KUR a-ma-at-ti ŠAgrave-šuacute ik-pu-ud-ma uruar-pad-da uruṣi-mir-ra urudi-maš-qa urusa-me-ri-na34) it-ti-ia uš-bal-kit-ma pa-a e-da-a uacute-šaacute-aacuteš-kin-ma ik-ṣu-ra MEgrave um-ma-na-at gap-šaacute-a-tidaš-šur ad-ke-ma ina uruqar-qa-ri URU na-ram-i-šuacute šaacute-a-šuacute a-di mun-daḫ-ṣe-šuacute35) al-me ak-šud-su uruqar-qa-ru ina dgiacutera aq-mu šaacute-a-šuacute ma-šak-šuacute a-ku-uṣ ina qeacute-rebURUMEŠ šuacute-nu-ti EN ḫi-iṭ-ṭi a-duk-ma su-lum-mu-uacute uacute-šaacute-aacuteš-kin 2 me gišGIGIRMEŠ 6 meanšepeacutet-ḫal-lim36) i-na ŠAgrave UNMEŠ KUR a-ma-at-ti ak-ṣur-ma UGU ki-ṣir LUGAL-ti-ia uacute-rad-di helliphellip

ldquoYau-birsquodi of Hamath a commoner (who was) not the rightful throne-holder an evil Hittiteset his heart on becoming the king of the land of Hamath He prompted Arpad ṢimirraDamascus and Samaria to rebel against me achieved unity (among them) and preparedfor battleI mobilized the vast troops of Assur and besieged and captured him together with his fight-ers in Qarqar the city he loved I burnt Qarqar with fire As for him I flayed his skin I killedthose who had committed crimes and established peace in those cities I gathered fromamong the people of Hamath 200 chariot (crew)s and 600 cavalry troops and addedthem to my royal contingent

Noteworthy here is the remark that those who had committed crimes that is hadopposed the Assyrians had been killed by Sargon in the cities involved in theinsurrection including Samaria

A few additional texts from late in Sargonrsquos reign provide yet another ac-count of Yau-birsquodirsquos revolt They include Sargonrsquos stele from Cyprus a cylinder

For possible find spots see the discussion in Frahm ldquoA Sculpted Slabrdquo 52ndash53 In 2001 theslab was definitely in the Mosul Museum but it may have been sent to Baghdad in 2003 andthus have escaped the destruction wrought upon the Assyrian artifacts in the Mosul Museumby supporters of ISIS in 2015 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 189ndash248 Orthographical variantsare not noted in the following

78 Eckart Frahm

inscription from Nineveh and the so-called Borowski Stele which was probablyerected like some earlier Sargon stelae in the territory of Hamath

Texts 13ndash 15 Cyprus Stele⁶⁹ Nineveh Cylinder⁷⁰ Borowski Stele⁷sup1 (all appa-rently covering events up to 707 BCE)

Line count after the Cyprus Stele orthographic variants not noted

51) KUR a-ma-at-tu a-na paṭ g[im-ri-šaacute]52) a-bu-bi-iš as-p[u-un]53) mdia-uacute-bi-irsquo-di LUGAL-šuacute-nu⁷sup254) a-di kim-ti-šuacute mun-daḫ-ṣ[e-e-šuacute]55) šal-lat KUR-šuacute ka-mu-us-su56) a-na KUR aš-šurki ub-la57) 2 me (var 3 me) gišGIGIRMEŠ 6 me anšepeacutet-ḫal-lum58) (na-aacuteš) giška-ba-bu gišaz-ma-re-e59) i-na ligraveb-bi-šuacute-nu ak-ṣur-ma60) UGU ki-ṣir MAN-ti-ia uacute-rad-di61) 6 lim 3 me luacuteaš-šur-a-a EN hi-iṭ-ṭi62) ina qeacute-reb KUR ha-am-ma-ti uacute-še-šib-ma63) luacutešu-utndashSAG-ia luacuteENndashNAM64) UGU-šuacute-nu aacuteš-kun-ma biacutel-tu ma-da-at-tu65) uacute-kin UGU-šuacute-un

ldquoI swept away the land of Hamath with all its territory like a flood I brought Yau-birsquoditheir king in fetters together with his family and [his] fighters and (other) captives fromhis land to Assyria 200300 chariot (crew)s⁷sup3 and 600 cavalry bearers of shields and lancesI gathered together from among them and added to my royal contingent I settled in themidst of the land of Hamath 6300 Assyrians who had committed crimes I appointed a eu-nuch of mine over them to serve as provincial governor and imposed upon them tribute andtaxesrdquo

Edition Franccediloise Malbran-Labat ldquoSection 4 Inscription assyrienne (No 4001)rdquo in Kitiondans les textes ed Marguerite Yon (Paris Eacuteditions Recherche sur les Civilisations 2006)345ndash54 Edition Reginald C Thompson ldquoA Selection from the Cuneiform Historical Texts from Nine-veh (1927ndash32)rdquo Iraq 7 (1940) 85ndash 131 esp 86ndash89 So called after its former owner Elie Borowski Edition J David Hawkins ldquoThe New SargonStele from Hamardquo in From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea Studies on the History of Assyria andBabylonia in Honour of A K Grayson ed Grant Frame (Leiden Istanbul Nederlands Instituutvoor het Nabije Oosten 2004) 151ndash64 The royal title of Yau-birsquodi is preserved in the texts of the Nineveh Cylinder and (albeit thesign LUGAL is damaged) the Cyprus Stele on the Borowski Stele ll 51ndash56 are lost Note that exactly the same number 200 is given in the Nimrud Prism (Text 8) for chariot(crew)s from Samaria


The Borowski Stele (Side B) has instead of ll 61ndash65

5) 6 lim 3 me luacuteaš-šur-a-a EN hi-iṭ-ṭi6) giacutel-la-su-nu a-miš-ma7) re-e-ma ar-ši-šuacute-nu-ti-ma8) ina qeacute-reb KURha-am-ma-ti uacute-še-šib-šuacute-nu-ti9) GUacuteUN ma-da-tu za-bal ku-du-u-ri10) a-lak KASKAL ki-i šaacute MANMEŠ ADMEŠ-iaacute11) a-na mir-hu-le-na kura-ma-ta-a-a12) e-mid-du e-mid-su-nu-ti

ldquoI disregarded the guilt of 6300 Assyrians who had committed crimes had mercy on themand settled them in the midst of the land of Hamath I imposed upon them tribute taxesthe bearing of the basket (ie corveacutee work) and (the duty) to go on campaigns just as myroyal forefathers had imposed (these things) on Irḫulena of Hamath (a contemporary ofShalmaneser III)rdquo

What is particularly important here is Sargonrsquos claim that he had sent to Hamathsome 6300 Assyrian ldquocriminalsrdquo in all likelihood people who had opposed himin the wake of his accession to the throne Given that Assyrian citizens in Ha-math had been the explicit targets of Yau-birsquodirsquos earlier rampage (see Texts 1and 11) this forced move was probably not a reason for much joy for the individ-uals in question one wonders though why Sargon was not concerned that theunfaithful Assyrians might make common cause with the people of Hamath

There are a few minor references to Samaria and Hamath in other Sargon in-scriptions mostly from Khorsabad on cylinder fragments bull colossi thresh-olds and wall slabs The texts in question which list the kingrsquos military accom-plishments in a non-chronological order do not provide anything that wouldchange in a major way the overall picture but it seems worthwhile to quote atleast those passages that mention Samaria and Bīt-Ḫumria ie Israel by name

Texts 16ndash 18 (all covering events up to 707 BCE)

Display Inscription XIV⁷⁴

15) [aacute]š-lul uruši-nu-uḫ-tuacute urusa-mer-i-na ugrave gi-mir KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a

ldquoI plundered (or I carried away people from) Šinuḫtu Samaria and all of Bīt-Ḫumriardquo

Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 75ndash81

80 Eckart Frahm

Bull Inscription⁷⁵

21) sa-pi-in urusa-me-ri-na ka-la KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a KUR kas-ku

ldquo(Sargon is) the one who crushed Samaria all of Bīt-Ḫumria and the land of Kaskurdquo

Threshold Inscription no 4⁷⁶

31ndash32) ka-ši-id urusa-mer-i-na ugrave gi-mir KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a

ldquo(Sargon is) the one who conquered Samaria and all of Bīt-Ḫumriardquo

Noteworthy in these summary accounts is the aggressive language used by Sar-gon who talks about having ldquoplunderedrdquo ldquocrushedrdquo and ldquoconqueredrdquo SamariaIn light of the archaeological evidence which does not suggest that the Assyri-ans inflicted any major destruction on Samaria one is however probably welladvised not to take all the aforementioned statements as accurate descriptionsof what actually happened to the city⁷⁷

Sargonrsquos main wife (MUNUSEacuteGAL) at least later in his reign was a womanby the name of Atalyā As observed by Dalley this name is reminiscent of that ofthe ninth century Israelite princess ctlyh[w] who later married into the royal fam-ily of Judah (see 2Kgs 816ndash 1116)⁷⁸ Drawing on Dalleyrsquos idea that Atalyā mighthave been a Judean princess it might seem tempting to assume that she was infact of Israelite backgroundwhich if true would shed some interesting psycho-historical light on Sargonrsquos approach towards Samaria but the uncertainties inidentifying Atalyārsquos true background are so substantial⁷⁹ that it seems preferableto abstain from further speculation

Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 60ndash74 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 259ndash71 Thus also Tappy ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samariardquo Stephanie Dalley ldquoYabacirc Atalyā and the Foreign Policy of Late Assyrian Kingsrdquo SAAB 12(1998) 83ndash98 For a linguistic discussion of the name see Ran Zadok ldquoNeo-Assyrian Notesrdquo in Treasureson Camelsrsquo Humps hellip Historical and Literary Studies from the Ancient Near East Presented to Is-rael Ephrsquoal ed Mordechai Cogan and Danrsquoel Kahn (Jerusalem Magnes Press 2008) 312ndash30esp 327ndash29 for the problem in general Eckart Frahm ldquoFamily Matters Psychohistorical Reflec-tions on Sennacherib and His Timesrdquo in Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem Story Historyand Historiography ed Isaac Kalimi and Seth Richardson (Leiden Brill 2014) 163ndash222esp 182ndash89 with earlier literature


3 Conclusions and Final Thoughts

The main goal of the previous section was to provide readers with an opportu-nity to review in an unprejudiced way what Sargonrsquos royal inscriptions have tosay about the rebellion of Yau-birsquodi of Hamath and the fall of Samaria No sys-tematic attempt was made to establish the actual chronology of the eventsand provide a historical synthesis It would be somewhat cowardly howeverif the present author failed to conclude this article without a few remarks onthese issues however provisional they may be

The point of departure for any discussion of the last years of the kingdom ofIsrael has to be the short note in the Babylonian Chronicle (i 27ndash28) that claimsthat Shalmaneser V at an undetermined point after his accession to the Assyrianthrone ldquoravaged Samariardquo (urušaacute-ma-ra-rsquoi-in iḫ-te-pe)⁸⁰ The note confirms what2Kgs 173ndash5 and 189ndash 10 have to say about King Shalmaneserrsquos crucial role inthe downfall of Samaria It also indicates something else not sufficientlystressed in the secondary literature the defeat of Samaria must have been amajor turning point ndash otherwise it would hardly have been the only deed ascri-bed to Shalmaneser in the Babylonian Chronicle

It stands to reason that an event so important would also have been men-tioned in the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle which is unfortunately badly dam-aged for the period in question Based on Millardrsquos copy and edition of theonly surviving fragment K 3202⁸sup1 the historical events listed for the years 727to 722 BCE are the following

Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles 73 Some scholars have questioned whetherthe text is really about Samaria suggesting the alternative reading urušaacute-ba-ra-rsquoi-in but Dubov-skyacute after carefully studying the forms of the signs MA and BA on the Chronicle tablet has con-vincingly demonstrated that the reading urušaacute-ma-ra-rsquoi-in is to be preferred which would confirmthe Biblical passages talking about Shalmaneser as the conqueror of Samaria (Peter DubovskyacuteldquoDid Shalmaneser V Conquer the City of Samaria An Investigation into the maba-sign inChronicle 1rdquo Or 80 (2011) 423ndash35) The date of the devastation inflicted on Samaria is not speci-fied in the Babylonian Chronicle ndash there is no need to assume as Narsquoaman ldquoThe HistoricalBackgroundrdquo 206ndash25 did that the passage refers to an assault on the city in Shalmaneserrsquosaccession year and the horizontal ruling in the text between the reference to the ravaging of Sa-maria and the following note about Shalmaneserrsquos death in the tenth month of his fifth year(ie 722 BCE) does not in my view necessarily mean that Samaria was conquered before722 For further discussion of these matters and the meaning of ḫepucirc in the Babylonian Chroni-cle see Becking The Fall of Samaria 22ndash25 Alan R Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-Assyr-ian Text Corpus Project 1994) 45ndash46 pl 15 B 3 See also Jean-Jacques Glassner Mesopotamian

82 Eckart Frahm

727 a-na ur[u hellip] [(hellip) SILIM-ma-n]undashMAŠ ina gi[šGUZA ittūšib]726 i-[na māti]725 a-n[a hellip]724 a-n[a hellip]723 a-[na hellip]

722 [(hellip) Šarru-ukīn ina kussecirc ittūšib (hellip)]

727 (The army fought) against the city [hellip] [(hellip)]⁸sup2 Shalmaneser [sat] on the throne726 (The army the king stayed) in [the land (of Assyria)]725 (The army fought) against [hellip]724 (The army fought) against [hellip]723 (The army fought) against [hellip]

722 [(hellip)⁸sup3 Sargon [sat] on the throne (hellip)]

Another fragment (Rm 2 97)⁸⁴ begins with two poorly preserved lines that eitherdeal with the years 721 and 720 BCE respectively or with 720 BCE alone⁸⁵ Tad-mor assuming the latter⁸⁶ restored [ana māt ḫat-t]i⁸⁷ [hellip uššū ša bīt DN ša GNkar]-ru ldquo[(The army fought) against the land of] Ḫatti (ie northern Syria) [hellip the

Chronicles (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2004) 174ndash75 Unfortunately no photo ofK 3202 is available on the CDLI website and I was unable to collate the fragment in London It is possible that the beginning of the line included a reference to the date of the kingrsquos ac-cession to the throne which occurred according to the Babylonian Chronicle on the 25th of Ṭe-bētu For a parallel see the Eponym Chroniclersquos reference to the accession of Tiglath-pileser in745 BCE (Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 43) As in the entry for 727 BCE there might have been a reference to the kingrsquos accession datewhich in the case of Sargon was the 12th day of the month Ṭebētu if we are to believe the Bab-ylonian Chronicle The beginning of the entry might have mentioned another military campaignundertaken by Shalmaneser shortly before his death for parallels see the entries in the EponymChronicle for the years 727 and 705 (Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 45 48) Lesslikely is that there was a reference to the turmoil that seems to have accompanied Sargonrsquos ac-cession Considering how late in the year this last event occurred the entry did probably not in-clude a reference to yet another episode Edition and copy Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 46 pl 16 B 4 The uncertainty is due to the fact that several entries in this Eponym Chronicle fragment runover more than one line Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 85 The photo on the CDLI website confirms Millardrsquos copy of the modest traces at the end of theline The earlier copy by Carl Bezold ldquoSome Unpublished Assyrian lsquoLists of Officialsrsquordquo Proceed-ings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 11 (1889) 286ndash87 esp pl 3 after p 286 does not in-dicate any traces for the line in question


foundations of the temple of DN of the city of GN] were laidrdquo⁸⁸ which is alto-gether not implausible albeit some uncertainty remains In case the first twolines cover two years an alternative restoration might be for the first one (721BCE) [ina KU]R ldquo[(The army the king stayed) in the] land (of Assyria)rdquo whichwould be in line with what is otherwise known about this year and for the sec-ond (720 BCE) [ana uruqar-qa]-ru ldquo[(The army fought) against] Qarqarrdquo ndash eventhough it must be admitted that in light of the writing conventions of the Assyr-ian Eponym Chronicles one would rather have expected ana uruqar-qa-ri⁸⁹

Both 2Kgs 173ndash6 and 2Kgs 189ndash 10 claim that Shalmaneser conquered Sa-maria after a three year siege a statement so specific that it should not be dis-missed out of hand⁹⁰ Judging from the entries the Eponym Chronicle providesfor the years 727 and 726 BCE this siege if it really took place cannot havebegun before 725 BCE It either lasted therefore from 725 to 723 BCE or from724 to 722 BCE ending with Samariarsquos downfall While the nine regnal years at-tributed to Hoshea in the Bible could be taken as pointing towards the earlierdates⁹sup1 Sargonrsquos claim in his Annals (Text 7) that the conquest of Samaria occur-red in his accession year is more easily explained if one assumes that the siegelasted from 724 to 722 BCE Clearly the siege was brought to a successful conclu-sion prior to Sargonrsquos actual accession in the tenth month of 722 BCE This isindicated by the aforementioned note in the Babylonian Chronicle by the ac-counts in 2Kgs 17 and 18 which ascribe the final breakthrough to Shalmaneserand by the fact that no military achievements are mentioned in Sargonrsquos earlyAshur Charter (Text 1) for the kingrsquos accession year and his first regnal year

Tadmorrsquos restoration of the second line follows Arthur Ungnad ldquoEponymenrdquo in RlA 2 edErich Ebeling and Bruno Meissner (Berlin de Gruyter 1938) 412ndash57 esp 433 and is inspired bythe Eponym Chroniclersquos entries for the years 788 and 717 BCE See also CAD K 209a Millard TheEponyms of the Assyrian Empire 46 and Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles 174 refrained fromoffering any restorations It is also possible that the entry for 720 BCE rather than mentioning the campaign to theLevant (in which the king did not participate after all) dealt with the battles fought by the As-syrians in Babylonia in that year Note that the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle does occasionally refer to prolonged sieges That ofthe city of Arpad is mentioned in the entries for the years 743 to 740 BCE (Millard The Eponymsof the Assyrian Empire 43ndash44) See Becking The Fall of Samaria 52ndash53 Like others Becking argues that Hoshearsquos first reg-nal year was 731 BCE Note however that the chronological data the Bible provides for Hosheaproduce so many problems that attempts to come up with a scenario that fits them all (andmoreover takes into account the Biblical report about Hoshearsquos imprisonment prior to the Assyr-ian siege) appear somewhat quixotic especially if Levin (this volume) is right and 2Kgs 173ndash5 isa late addition (see above n 61)

84 Eckart Frahm

Sargonrsquos later claim that it was actually he and not Shalmaneser who hadconquered Samaria in 722 BCE⁹sup2 can be seen as an attempt to demonstrate ina text that recorded the kingrsquos military successes on a year by year basis thathe had achieved great things from the very beginning including in his accessionyear and his first regnal year ndash when he was in fact preoccupied by the internalunrest his power grab had caused

This inner-Assyrian strife ndash whose existence can be inferred from several ofSargonrsquos inscriptions⁹sup3 ndash did not remain unobserved in the empirersquos Western pe-riphery It prompted almost immediately an anti-Assyrian rebellion which washeaded by Yau-birsquodi a political leader apparently not of royal stock operatingin the territory of Hamath Several fairly new Assyrian provinces among themArpad Ṣimirra and Damascus joined the insurrection⁹⁴ The people of Samariawho seem to have been kingless at this point but whose capital city had probablynot yet been turned into the center of an Assyrian province did so as well de-spite the strenuous siege they had apparently suffered in the previous years

In 720 BCE after a bloody battle fought in and around Qarqar on the Or-ontes an Assyrian army sent by Sargon managed to quell the rebellion captureYau-birsquodi and pacify the other participants in the insurgency It stands to reasonthat the Israelites essentially surrendered to the Assyrian troops at this pointand that it was not necessary to subject Samaria to another siege

Sargonrsquos earliest inscriptions most importantly the Ashur Charter do nottalk about how the Assyrians treated Samaria in the aftermath of their victorybut in an inscription from 713 BCE (Text 6) Sargon claims for himself to haveldquomade Bīt-Ḫumria tremblerdquo More detailed information on Samariarsquos fate is avail-able from inscriptions from the last years of Sargonrsquos reign (Texts 7ndash9 16ndash 18)These texts mention among other things the deportation of significant portionsof the Samarian people the enlistment of the Samarian chariot troops into theAssyrian army the transformation of Samaria into an Assyrian province andthe resettlement of Samaria with Arabs All these things probably happened instages and over a longer period of time the population transfer of the Arabsfor example is dated in the Annals to 715 BCE The texts now also claim that Sar-gon had ldquobesieged ldquoconqueredrdquo and ldquocrushedrdquo Samaria (Texts 9 and 17) pos-sibly alluding to the events of 722 BCE

That Sargon participated in some military capacity in the conquest of the city is possible butcannot be proven See above Texts 1 and 13ndash 15 and the discussion sections following them Arpad had become a province in 740 BCE Ṣimirra in 738 BCE and Damascus in 732 BCE seeBagg Die Assyrer und das Westland 235


Most of the late Sargon inscriptions leave the timeline of the events concern-ing Samaria unspecified Sargonrsquos Annals however as pointed out earlier fitthem into a Procrustean bed of pseudo-chronology They claim that it was inhis accession year that Sargon defeated the Samarians deported and replacedthem with other people and turned their land into a province Judging by a par-allel passage in the Nimrud Prism (Text 8) the account probably also claimedthat the Samarians had made common cause with ldquoan enemy kingrdquo an allusionin all likelihood to their alliance with Yau-birsquodi In other words in the AnnalsSargonrsquos scribes seem to have assigned events that happened at very differentstages ndash from Shalmaneserrsquos conquest of Samaria in 722 BCE to the quellingof the insurrection in the West in 720 BCE to the reorganization of Samariaand its hinterland in subsequent years ndash to Sargonrsquos accession year in whichthe king actually ruled for no more than two and a half months⁹⁵

Obviously much of this reconstruction although it follows in many waysearlier scholars such as Tadmor or Fuchs⁹⁶ remains hypothetical The problemis that the various written sources available for the last days of the kingdomof Israel contradict one another in crucial respects and cannot be fully recon-ciled As already pointed out in the introduction substantial progress willonly be possible through future discoveries ndash for example of a manuscript ofthe Assyrian Eponym Chronicle with an undamaged account of the years 727to 715 BCE Until then a full scholarly consensus regarding the events that ledto the fall of Samaria will probably remain elusive

For similar chronological manipulations in the inscriptions of Sargonrsquos successor see Liver-ani ldquoCritique of Variants and the Titulary of Sennacheribrdquo Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 22ndash40 77ndash 100 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II ausKhorsabad 457ndash58

86 Eckart Frahm

Frederick Mario Fales

Why Israel

Reflections on Shalmaneser Vrsquos and Sargon IIrsquosGrand Strategy for the Levant

1 Introduction

This paper attempts to look at the theme of ldquothe last days of Israelrdquo from a his-torical perspective based mainly on Assyriological data and on a few gleaningsfrom archaeological reports ndash although I am fully aware that a rich and well-at-tended conference such as is gathered here on this theme would never havebeen conceived and organized if these two important bodies of data togetherwith the similarly crucial Biblical evidence and other sets of documentary mate-rials were devoid of ongoing controversy in their precise contextualization andmutual interfacing in their chronological pinpointing and in their overall impli-cations My specific approach to the theme is meant to tackle the subject fromthe point of view of a possible Assyrian ldquogrand strategyrdquo in the Levant afterthe demise of the last of the great Aramaean state Damascus in the third quar-ter of the 8th century BC We may thus start by asking ourselves two basic ques-tions can a ldquogrand strategyrdquo of the Assyrian empire be said to have existed atleast at some point in time And what could its mechanisms have been in theLevantine context sup1

A word on the state of art is due here Research on the texts of the Neo-Assyrian imperial pe-riod ndash both of official-ideological and ldquoeverydayrdquoarchival nature and scope ndash has flourishedthrough well-funded national research programs and internationally coordinated scholarly ef-forts in the last 40 years Felicitously in these two first decades of the 21st century a sufficientlevel of interpretation and publication in disseminated form has been reached as to allow notonly the (few and dwindling) ldquoinner circlerdquo specialists but also a vast (and growing) host of stu-dents of allied or connected disciplines to participate in the construction of coherent overallperspectives regarding the history of Neo-Assyrian imperial period All such perspectives ndashwhich often also include expertise on the complexity of the contemporaneous archaeologicalcontexts ndash are to be considered equally welcome insofar as they have enriched and are enrich-ing the problematical terrain on which to cast the comprehensive historical description and eval-uation of the Assyrian Empire ndash as the earliest of a set of military and political experiments inachieving ldquototal supraregional rulerdquo that characterized the Near East in the 1st millennium BCEand continued in the West into the subsequent millennium As is often the case in developingintellectual horizons a number of different interpretive models prove at this time to be mutually

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-005

2 The Grand Strategy of the Assyrians in theLevant Setting the Stage

The first question (ldquocan a grand strategy of the Assyrian state be said to have ex-istedrdquo) shows at least in my experience the interesting feature of being ac-knowledged in general ndash ie even without need for an in-depth justification ndashby a number of Ancient Near Eastern scholars both on the philological andthe archaeological side of things while it is considered debatable by othersmost often operating in the realm of world historysup2 Apart from this howeveror rather prior to it we may point out the problem of reaching an agreementon what is a ldquogrand strategyrdquo Now as the modern political scientist CS Grayhas it ldquostrategy is the bridge that relates military power to political purpose(but) it is neither military power per se nor political purposerdquosup3 This dry but

competing for recognition on the stage ndash whether models involving benchmarks of comparativehistorical trialvalidity (eg pax assyriaca ldquomilitarismrdquo or the so-called ldquoAugustan thresholdrdquo)or adaptations of pan-historical constructs to the scenario at hand (eg ldquoWorld-Systems Theo-ryrdquo) At the same time some prejudiced viewswith forerunners going back to the very infancy ofAssyriology in the late 19th century (eg concerning the Assyriansrsquo alleged ldquogreedrdquo ldquooutrightcrueltyrdquo ldquodisregard for other culturesrdquo) do not seem to have been fully eradicated through ad-equate ldquostress testsrdquo as yet but to have rather been (perhaps unconsciously) embedded withinthese new theoretical formulations In a nutshell therefore this is an exciting time for Neo-As-syrian history ndash but it is also necessary that experimenting with new frameworks and conceptsshould be held under the tight control of common senseWahrscheinlichkeit and the unyieldingburden of ldquohardrdquo evidence For a broad overview of present-day historiographical approaches tothe chronological and geographical scenario treated in the present contribution cf Joshua TWalton The Regional Economy of the Southern Levant in the 8th-7th Centuries BCE (PhD thesisHarvard University 2015 httpsdashharvardeduhandle117467381) The quest for an Assyri-an ldquoGrand Strategyrdquo as presented in this chapter in which the conquest and annexation of thekingdom of Israel could be contextualized implies no new interpretive model per se but merelya heuristic attempt to project the event of the Fall of Samaria onto a wider geographical andchronological canvas in order to evaluate the ensuing results See on the one hand eg Bradley J Parker The Mechanics of Empire The Northern Frontierof Assyria as a Case Study in Imperial Dynamics (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Pro-ject 2001) Frederick Mario Fales LrsquoImpero Assiro Storia e Amministrazione IXndashVII sec aC (Roma Bari Laterza 2001) Simo Parpola ldquoAssyriarsquos Expansion in the 8th and 7th Centuriesand Its Long-Term Repercussions in the Westrdquo in Symbiosis Symbolism and the Power of thePast ed William G Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2003) 99ndash 111On the other hand see eg Reinhard Bernbeck ldquoImperialist Networks Ancient Assyria andthe United Statesrdquo Present Pasts 2 (2010) 142ndash68 Ariel M Bagg ldquoPalestine under AssyrianRule A New Look at the Assyrian Imperial Policy in the Westrdquo JAOS 133 (2013) 119ndash44 Colin S Gray Modern Strategy (Oxford Oxford University Press 1999) 17

88 Frederick Mario Fales

clear definition claims precise adaptations from the pioneering study by Carl vonClausewitz On War⁴ and ndash in more recent days ndash from Sir Basil Henry LiddellHart according to whom strategy is ldquothe art of distributing and applying militarymeans to fulfill the aims of policyrdquo⁵ With these forerunners in mind there is nodoubt that Grayrsquos definition of ldquostrategyrdquo indicates a link between specific mili-tary actions and their mid-to-long-term consequences in the future policy to beenforced or adapted vis-agrave-vis the vanquished in other words at least logicallywar comes first policy follows I dare say that this approach might at first sightstrike some as particularly fitting for the Assyrian historical evidence although Iwill attempt to show that this is decidedly not the case

We may now move to the expression ldquogrand strategyrdquo which originally wasmerely conceived as a broader and more extended form of strategy and as suchinterchanged with ldquohigher strategyrdquo in Liddell Hartrsquos definition its role as hestated was ldquoto co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation or band ofnations toward the attainment of the political object of the warrdquo This definitionin which ldquograndrdquo meant all said and done a strategy executed through inter-connections at the highest levels of the state with the marshaling of the fullrange of the statersquos resources may summon with ease (and some nostalgic pleas-ure) memory flashes of Churchillrsquos resounding speeches and of D-day⁶ but it hasbeen in recent decades superseded by a wider and more nuanced concept inwhich the stakes are more evenly distributed between wartime and peacetime

This we owe in particular to political theoreticians such as Edward N Lutt-wak and Michael Walzer⁷ who have analyzed decision-making in war and peacefinding them to be of a fully different order and in fact often oppositional so asto require entirely varying perspectives and methods of planning and thinkingHence a renewed definition of ldquogrand strategyrdquo by Luttwak himself who appliedit ndash most usefully for us ndash in his wide-ranging historical-political overviews ofthe Roman and the Byzantine empires ldquoGrand strategy is simply the level at

Carl von Clausewitz On War trans Michael Howard and Peter Peret (Princeton NJ PrincetonUniversity Press 1976) 178 Basil H Liddell Hart Strategy The Indirect Approach (London Faber amp Faber 1976) 335 In point of fact Churchill seems to have been preoccupied by the interplay between politicsand military strategy already since Word War I marked by the Gallipoli disaster 17 February1915 to 9 January 1916 when he wrote ldquoThe distinction between politics and strategy diminishesas the point of view is raised At the summit true politics and strategy are onerdquo Winston SChurchill The World Crisis 1911ndash 1918 Part 2 1915 (New York Scribner 1923) 404ndash405 froma dispatch dated 1 June 1915 ie right in the middle of the battle of attrition at Gallipoli Edward N Luttwak Strategy The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge MA Cambridge Univer-sity Press 1987) Michael Walzer Arguing about War (New Haven CT Yale University Press2004)

Why Israel 89

which knowledge and persuasion or in modern terms intelligence and diploma-cy interact with military strength to determine outcomes in a world of otherstates with their own grand strategiesrdquo⁸

We need not further pursue the ways and means by which Luttwak illustrat-ed the applications of this definition in the very complex and very different re-alities of the Roman and Byzantine empires suffice it to say that both recon-structions of this sharp political-theorist-turned-historian had to deal with theempiresrsquo multiple internal alliances and efforts at creating inner structures ofself-protection from outside perils But simply going back to his definition ofldquogrand strategyrdquo quoted above I believe there is a small but clear body of Assyr-ian textual evidence that fits it to a certain extent dating to the age of Tiglath-pileser III and especially of Sargon II although precious little of this evidenceconcerns the scenario of the Levant

A few years ago I analyzed Neo-Assyrian letters for the presence of theclause dibbī ṭābūti issīšu(nu) dabābu ldquoto speak kindly to him (or to them)rdquothrough which we can see the opening maintaining or last-resort offering ofdiplomatic or in any case non-bellicose relations between Assyria and a num-ber of polities beyond its ldquoinnerrdquo borders⁹ The best example regarding the Le-vant is actually from the age of Tiglath-pileser III in a well-known letter writtenby Qurdi-Aššur-lamur possibly the governor of Ṣimirra in Phoenicia to be datedaround 734 BCEsup1⁰

As a confirmation of the kingrsquos prior instruction ndash quoted at the outset of theletter ndash to ldquospeak kindlyrdquo to the king of Tyre the governor proceeds to describe awell-oiled mechanism of peaceful economic exploitation of this vassal polity bythe Assyrians whereby the Tyrians are allowed to occupy their wharves on theMediterranean to go in and out from the warehouses and to conduct their busi-ness by ascending Mount Lebanon and bringing down timber on which the gov-ernor has taxes levied by tax inspectors controlling the entire Lebanon range andthe coastal quays So far so good but even more interestingly the sole exceptiondescribed in the same letter ndash that of the recalcitrant Sidonians ndash entails the im-

Edward N Luttwak The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge MA CambridgeUniversity Press 2009) 409 Frederick Mario Fales ldquolsquoTo Speak Kindly to himthemrsquo as Item of Assyrian Political Dis-courserdquo in Of God(s) Trees Kings and Scholars Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honourof Simo Parpola ed Mikko Luukko Saana Svaumlrd and Raija Mattila (Helsinki Finnish OrientalSociety 2009) 27ndash40 This letter (ND 2715) has most recently been published by Mikko Luukko The Correspond-ence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from CalahNimrud (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Cor-pus Project 2012) no 22 Online version httporaccmuseumupennedusaaoP224471


mediate deployment of a well-known corps of military police (the Itursquoeans) to ter-rify the lumberjacks on the mountain and to bring the situation back to the de-sired state of fiscal normalcy As Teddy Roosevelt used to say ldquoSpeak softly butcarry a big stickrdquo indeed

But an even clearer case of what a policy of ldquokind wordsrdquo traded betweenthe Assyrians and the chiefsrepresentatives of foreign powers could entail asan alternative to the use of armed force may be viewed in a letter written by Sar-gon himself to a subordinate Aššur-šarru-uṣur The latter had related to the kingthe news that king Midas of Phrygia had captured fourteen Cilician envoys ontheir way to the enemy state of Urartu and delivered them to the AssyriansThis act of spontaneous detente prompted a joyous outburst on the part of theMesopotamian ruler ldquoMy gods Aššur Šamaš Bel and Nabucirc have now taken ac-tion and without a battle [or any]thing the Phrygian has given us his word andhas become our allyrdquosup1sup1

In sum as I noticed at the time the policy of dibbī ṭābūti ldquokind wordsrdquo refersto a backdrop of political relations meant to extend the range of action of Assyriansuzerainty beyond the strict confines of its provincial system to vassal polities orexternal allies ruling out (or minimizing to the least degree) recourse to armedforce whether threatened or carried out The Akkadian expression ndash and its ensu-ing policy of ldquosoft powerrdquo in a specific Assyrian formulation ndash seems to apply bothto initial stages of a diplomatic agreement as well as to consolidated situations ofpeaceful relations and ndash as other types of texts show ndash even to last-minute offersof dialogue without recourse to arms as eg the famous letter of Ashurbanipal tothe citizens of Babylon inciting them feelingly to submission may showsup1sup2 In thissense even the second message of Rabshakeh whatever one may think aboutits authenticity authorship and date might qualify as the expression of an Assyr-ian grand strategy in which ldquointelligence and diplomacy interact with militarystrengthrdquo as Luttwak put it

Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part I Letters from Assyria and the West (Hel-sinki Helsinki University Press 1987) no 1 7ndash 10 Online version httporaccmuseumupen-nedusaaoP224485 This is the well-known letter ABL 301 written 23II652 BCE For an edition see Simo ParpolaldquoDesperately Trying to Talk Sense A Letter of Assurbanipal Concerning his Brother Šamaš-šumu-ukīnrdquo in From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea Studies on the History of Assyria and Bab-ylonia in Honour of A K Grayson ed Grant Frame (Leiden Nederlands Instituut voor het NabijeOosten 2004) 227ndash34 and the discussion by Sanae Ito Royal Image and Political Thinking in theLetters of Assurbanipal (PhD thesis University of Helsinki 2015 httpurnfiURNISBN978-951-51-0973-6)

Why Israel 91

ldquoThus said the king of Assyria make your peace with me and come out to me so that youmay all eat from your vines and your fig trees and drink water from your cisterns until Icome and take you away to a land like your own a land of grain [fields] and vineyardsof bread and wine of olive oil and honey so that you may live and not dierdquo (2Kgs1831ndash32)

In a nutshell I would say that sufficient evidence may be summoned from As-syrian archival documentation to counteract or at least to curb the monolithicimpression that the official inscriptions of the Assyrian kings provide at a gen-eral and superficial perusal that the sole actual strategy to be ascribed to theAssyrian empire was a warmongering and relentlessly militaristic one of territo-rial annexation aimed at conquering all surrounding nations at despoiling theirresources and at uprooting their inhabitants through mass deportation This pol-icy was indisputably carried out far and wide but ndash for a comprehensive histor-ical-political reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian empire ndash it must be cast againstan alternative set of decisions which could lead to a delay or to an outright re-fraining from carrying out a set of assaults and destructions for eminently stra-tegic reasons

The fact that the Assyrian royal inscriptions due to their very nature as resgestae of the rulers with a specific emphasis on armed conquest and sometimeson the harsh punishments meted out to rebellious enemies dedicate hardly anyspace to alternative choices of this kind cannot at present ndash in the light of thequoted evidence present in epistolary or other ldquoeverydayrdquo texts ndash be used todeny the picture of a ldquogrand strategyrdquo which seems to have used all availablemeans to expand the range of Assyrian influence throughout Western AsiaAnd just to take a step further in this debate it may be observed that an imperialpolity which took time and effort as the Assyrians did to establish a vast net-work of treaties and pacts with other state or tribal formations ndash as may bemade out from the sum total of piecesfragments of direct evidence and indirectmentions ndash would seem to have decidedly been endowed with at least a generalldquogrand strategicrdquo vision of its capacities as well as of its limits

3 Tackling the Basic Issues Who ConqueredSamaria and When

We may now come to the issue of the possible application of Assyrian ldquograndstrategyrdquo to the fall of the kingdom of Israel where we can see an initial policyof non-belligerence between Shalmaneser V and Hoshea of Israel which deterio-rated into a situation of conflict from 2Kgs 173ndash6 in combination with very lim-


ited Assyrian sources Now I am aware that many papers in this monograph willbe dedicated to the long-standing problem of how many Assyrian kings con-quered Samaria one or two To cut to the chase I will state from the outsetthat I follow by and large the stance of Nadav Narsquoaman in his well-known con-tribution in Biblica of 1990with his one-king hypothesis centered on Sargon IIsup1sup3Narsquoaman maintained refining his teacher Hayim Tadmorrsquos conclusions‒ that Shalmaneser V led a first campaign against Israel making Hoshea his

vassal and that later he deposed him on the basis of the suspicion or evi-dence of a double entente with a king of Egypt named Socircsup1⁴ and the refusalto pay tribute to Assyria possibly deporting him to be heard of no more and

‒ that Sargon was in point of fact the actual conqueror of Samaria and theauthor of the mass deportations to ldquoHalah the Habor ndashthe river of Gozanndashand the cities of the Medesrdquo which find a parallel in Sargonrsquos inscriptionswith his flaunting in the Nimrud prism of having removed 27280 people toAssyria from the district of Samaria during his campaign to the west in 720BCsup1⁵ Now a small number of Neo-Assyrian texts discovered in sites of theformer Northern Kingdom and along the Via Maris have been analyzed asevidence of an Assyrian counter-deportation to Palestine (possibly fromBabylonia) again attributed to Sargonsup1⁶

As for the major stumbling-block of the three-year long siege of the city men-tioned in 2Kgs 175 I have for some time now followed Andreas Fuchsrsquo usefulcritical position on the extreme difficulty which Assyrian armies would have

Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)rdquo Bib 71(1990) 206ndash25 On the identity of the Egyptian king called Socirc (swrsquo) I recall the studies by Duane L Chris-tensen ldquoThe Identity of lsquoKing Sorsquo in Egypt (2 Kings XVII 4)rdquo VT 39 (1989) 140ndash53 (Tefnakht I ofSais) Alberto RW Green ldquoThe Identity of King So of Egypt an Alternative Interpretationrdquo JNES52 (1993) 99ndash 108 (Piankhy Piye of Kush) while others think of Osorkon IV of Tanis See RobertMorkotrsquos chapter in this volume Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (Goumlttingen Cuvillier 1994) 196ndash97344 Display Inscription ll 23ndash24 ldquoI fought with them (the Samarians) and I counted as spoil27280 people who lived therein with their chariots and the Gods of their trust Fifty chariots formy royal bodyguard I mustered from among them and the rest of them I settled in the midst ofAssyria The city of Samaria I resettled and made it greater than before People of the lands con-quered by my own hands I brought there My courtier I placed over them as a governor and Icounted them with Assyriansrdquo Nadav Narsquoaman and Ran Zadok ldquoAssyrian Deportations to the Province of Samerina in theLight of Two Cuneiform Tablets from Tel Hadidrdquo TA 27 (2000) 159ndash88 For the deportationsunder Sargon see already Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoPopulation Changes in Palestine following AssyrianDeportationsrdquo TA 20 (1993) 104ndash24

Why Israel 93

had in undertaking an extensive siege of major fortified cities located at greatdistances from their homeland much preferring to plunder the myriad of smallersites around and to ravage the mainstay of their enemies the rural environ-mentsup1⁷

In the past few years I applied this approach to the problem of Sennacheribrsquosalleged siege of Jerusalemsup1⁸ where ndash following an interesting intuition by DavideNadali on the meaning of the Assyrian expression ldquoto shut the enemy up like abird in a cagerdquosup1⁹ ndash one may rather posit a blockade of fortresses which isolatedthe besieged city within a confined area opportunely made barren of all resour-ces by the Assyrians awaiting ndash in total isolation from any possible help ndash forfamine to take its toll thus causing Hezekiahrsquos surrender

This overall perspective with its obvious advantages for the assailants interms of extensive duration and reduced human losses vis-agrave-vis a more uncer-tain operation of actual siege beneath the walls of a major city (as we nowcan more clearly gauge from Ephʿalrsquos precious monograph on the subject)sup2⁰has long had support among Assyriologists and some archaeologistssup2sup1 Howeverother scholars still seem reluctant to abandon the traditional image of a veritablesiege of Jerusalem thus disregarding the vastness of the site (at least 60 hec-tares) and the obviously incomparable complexity of a possible siege-operationlike the one actually enacted by Sennacherib at the site of Lachish which de-spite its relatively manageable size (20 to 30 hectares) forced the Assyrians tobuild a tall and vast siege-ramp under the pressure of unceasing enemy artillery

In the case under examination we should also take account of the fact thatthe archaeologically recorded destruction levels at Samaria attributable to this

Andreas Fuchs ldquoUumlber den Wert von Befestigungsanlagenrdquo ZA 98 (2008) 45ndash99 Frederick Mario Fales ldquoThe Road to Judah 701 BCE in the Context of Sennacheribrsquos Political-Military Strategyrdquo in Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem Story History and Historiography edIsaac Kalimi and Seth Richardson (Leiden Brill 2014) 223ndash48 Davide Nadali ldquoSieges and Similes of Sieges in the Royal Annals the Conquest of Damascusby Tiglath-pileser IIIrdquo KASKAL 6 (2009) 137ndash49 esp 139 One may even wonder whether theexpression in 2Kgs 174 אלכתיבוהרסאיורושאךלמוהרצעיו did not originally refer to a situationof the same sort and whether it was later substituted by the contents of the next verse Israel Ephʿal The City Besieged Siege and Its Manifestations in the Ancient Near East (Lei-den Brill 2009) Cf eg most recently Nazek Khalid Matty Sennacheribrsquos Campaign Against Judah and Jeru-salem in 701 BC A Historical Reconstruction (Berlin de Gruyter 2016) esp 95ndash 114 where theprevious suggestions by Walter MayerWilliam R Gallagher and David Ussishkin on the solutionof a blockade for Jerusalem are presented and Nadalirsquos hypothesis regarding Damascus is ac-cepted ndash yielding a sum total of 9 cases of Assyrian blockades in all geographical scenarios be-tween the late 8th and the late 7th centuries BCE


phase are of quite limited character and that they do not seem to have affectedthe interior of the city thus making a wholesale destruction of the site rather im-probablesup2sup2 this point may be considered together with the fact that Sargon no-where states that he has destroyed Samaria but in fact claims to have fully re-settled the city and ldquomade it greater than beforerdquosup2sup3 Thus the traditional viewof a double-armed conquest of Samaria by Shalmaneser V and then again bySargon such as Tadmor and many others after him formulated is open tomany doubts

Of course if one wishes to keep to the fore the laconic passage in the Bab-ylonian Chronicle referring to the ldquoravagerdquo of Samariasup2⁴ and to further integrateldquoSamariardquo as the locale of royal activity in the fragmentary Assyrian Eponym Listfor the years 725ndash723 BCEsup2⁵ it remains possible that it was the army of Shalma-neser V which in fact engaged in a long-lasting military operation against Sama-ria for the last three years of this rulerrsquos reign and that a reprise of the blockadeunder Sargon clinched the operation itself If so the three-year siege recorded in2Kgs 175 although not resulting per se in the conquest of Samaria would ndashwhatever its actual degree of exactitude or even of likelihood ndash be aptly placedwithin the Biblical narrative as an operational element logically antecedent tothe fall of the city

As noted by many authors eg Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria VolumeII the Eighth Century BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2001) 562ndash63 and see already Narsquoa-man ldquoThe Historical Backgroundrdquo 220 ldquoIt is not clear whether Samaria was severely damagedin the course of its conquest the scanty archaeological evidence hardly supports the claim ofoverall destruction We may rather assume a continuity of urban life and rapid reconstructionof the city under the Assyrians when Samaria became the capital of the province of Samerinardquo Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 88 314 Annals l 16 Cf Jean-Jacques Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles trans Benjamin R Foster (Atlanta GAScholars Press 2004) 194ndash95 l 28 ldquoOn the twenty-fifth day of the month of Tebet Shalmaneser(V) ascended the throne in Assyria ltand Akkadgt He ravaged Samaria (URUSa-maba-ra-rsquo-in)rdquoOn the toponym cf Brad E Kelle ldquoWhatrsquos in a Name Neo-Assyrian Designations for the North-ern Kingdom and Their Implications for Israelite History and Biblical Interpretationrdquo JBL 121(2002) 639ndash66 esp 662 and Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoDid Shalmaneser V Conquer the City of SamariaAn Investigation into the maba-sign in Chronicle 1rdquo Or 80 (2011) 423ndash38 (whose collation con-firmed the reading ma) Alan R Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-Assyr-ian Text Corpus Project 1994) 59

Why Israel 95

4 The Importance of the Conquest of Israelfor the Assyrian Empire

This said we may move to the actual problem of why it was important for Sargonto subjugate Samaria ndash with the mention of this subjugation being repeated withrelish throughout his annalistic and recapitulative official inscriptionssup2⁶ Pro-ceeding from the position that there is no single main strategic reason to befound in the texts I would like to take a double view of the matter by pointingout first what Assyria stood to gain immediately in the area around Samaria it-self by making the city the capital of a new province and secondly what longer-term and wider-ranging perspectives were opened by the fall of the NorthernKingdom

As recalled by various authors the earlier evidence of the Samaria ostracasup2⁷points to a flourishing production of olive oil and wine in the smaller sitesaround the capital of the Northern Kingdom As Finkelstein puts it ldquoThe ostracarefer to types of oil and wine names of places and regions around the capitaland names of officials Regardless of whether they represent shipments ofolive oil and wine to the capital or another kind of interaction between the cap-ital and countryside estatestowns they certainly attest to a large-scale oil andwine lsquoindustryrsquo at that timerdquo This picture is supported by small-size excavationsand surveys performed in the area around the citysup2⁸

But the Northern Kingdom was also a gateway to the growing phenomenonof Eastern Mediterranean trade as eg shown by the coastal sites of Atlit andespecially Dor with their multiple elements of archaeological information on so-phisticated trade networks which involved the entire Mediterranean area fromPhoenicia to Egypt touching various ports in Palestine One of the hallmarksin material culture for these networks is represented by the so-called ldquotorpedordquostorage jar of remarkably standard shape and volume found ldquoin dozens of ex-cavated sites in Lebanon and Israel mainly along the coast (eg Sarepta and

Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 457ndash58 Cf eg Ivan T Kaufman ldquoThe Samaria Ostraca An Early Witness to Hebrew WritingrdquoBA 45 (1982) 229ndash39 who posited a date of at least thirty years before the fall of the citywhile the more recent analysis by Hermann M Niemann ldquoA New Look at the Samaria OstracaThe King-Clan Relationshiprdquo TA 35 (2008) 249ndash66 esp 264 based on the breakdown of polit-ical power relations within the Northern Kingdom between the royal residence and tribalclanelites yields an early 8th century BCE dating Israel Finkelstein The Forgotten Kingdom The Archaeology and History of Northern IsraelAtlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2013 132


Tyre) but also in inland sites located along trade routes (such as Hazor and Me-giddo)rdquosup2⁹ Moreover the well-known archaeological evidence from shipwrecks ofldquorounded and beamyrdquo freighters laden with prize wines retrieved off the coastof Ashkelonsup3⁰ indicates the presence of various hundreds of such jars in intactcondition which petrographic analysis showed to come from the Phoeniciancoast with wine as their content presumably destined to Egyptian buyers Thepotential interest of the Assyrians for profits deriving from this ndash presumablywell-established and thriving ndash commercial activity may be gauged ex postfrom the meticulous and tight-reined provisions regarding naval commerce al-ready present in the letter of Qurdi-Aššur-lamur quoted above and enforcedon a larger scale by Esarhaddon on the Tyrian king Barsquoalu in 676 BCEsup3sup1

A third aspect regards the extreme interest which the Assyrians demonstrateto have had concerning horses with one of their favorite breeds represented bythe equids called Kusāyu ie ldquoNubianrdquosup3sup2 Undoubtedly by Sargonrsquos time whenthe demand for steeds to be employed both for the ever-growing war effort (egin Babylonia and the Zagros) as well as for the massive building operations atDur-Šarruken grew exponentially horses came to be bred within the confines ofAssyria itselfsup3sup3 But certainly a letter like the following one shows that the Levantwas one of the two gateways (the other being the Zagros mountains) throughwhich this crucial technological ldquoproductrdquo found its way to Assyria

ldquoI have received 45 horses for the countrysup3⁴ The emissaries (LUacuteMAḪ MEŠ) from the landsof Egypt (KURMu-ṣur-a-a) Gaza (KURHa-za-ta-a-a) Judah (KURIa-uacute-du-a-a) Moab

Israel Finkelstein Elena Zapassky Yuval Gadot Daniel M Master Lawrence E Stager andItzhak Benenson ldquoPhoenician lsquoTorpedorsquo Amphoras and Egypt Standardization of VolumeBased on Linear Dimensionsrdquo AeL 21 (2011) 249 R D Ballard Lawrence E Stager Daniel Master Dana Yoerger David Mindell Louis LWhit-comb Hanumant Singh and Dennis Piechota ldquoIron Age Shipwrecks in Deep Water off AshkelonIsraelrdquo AJA 106 (2002) 151ndash68 See now Frederick Mario Fales ldquoPhoenicia in the Neo-Assyrian Period an Updated Over-viewrdquo SAAB 23 (2017) 181ndash295 For the treaty see in particular 241ndash243 Lisa Heidorn ldquoThe Horses of Kushrdquo JNES 56 (1997) 105ndash 14 Horses of Egyptian origin areattested also in the Bible cf Nadav Narsquoaman Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors Interactionand Counteraction Collected Essays vol 1 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2005) 7 on 1Kgs 1028 Cf Frederick Mario Fales ldquoEthnicity in the Assyrian Empire a View from the Nisbe (I) For-eigners and lsquoSpecialrsquo Inner Communitiesrdquo in Literature as Politics Politics as Literature Essayson the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist ed David SVanderhooft and Abraham Wi-nitzer (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2013) 37ndash74 esp 63 The formula ša KUR is often opposed to ša KASKAL ldquofor the campaignrdquo and indicates thatthese horses were destined for use other than combat but it is unclear whether such a subdi-vision was established already at the time of the request provision or whether it arose from

Why Israel 97

(KURMa-ʾa-ba-a-a) and of the ldquosons of Ammonrdquo (KURBa-anndashAm-ma-na-a-a) enteredKalhu on the 12th their tributes in hand A (further) 24 horses of (the emissary) of Gaza(KURHa-za-ta-a-a) were (also) availablerdquosup3⁵

Again quoting Finkelstein ldquobefore Assyria established direct contacts with Egyptin the late 8th century BCE Israel was the source of these horses which werebrought from Egypt bred and raised at Megiddo and then sold to Assyria andother kingdoms in the northrdquo Finkelstein bases this judgment on the analysisof the layout of Megiddo in the 8th century BCE which should vindicate the de-scription by Chicago archaeologists of the pillared buildings with unified plan inthe newly reestablished urban plan as devoted to the stabling of horsessup3⁶ But ofcourse as shown by the above letter ndash to be dated after the fall of Samaria ndashthere was a veritable ldquorushrdquo on the part of many polities in the area for the ap-propriation of the Nubian horse breed and its redistribution (as commerce or inthis case ceremonial gifts) to Assyria

And finallywe have men As shown by Stephanie Dalleysup3⁷ the Nimrud HorseLists from the reign of Sargon show the presence of a unit made of top equestrianofficers from Samaria and it is the only unit from outside Assyria proper that isknown as a national unit under its own city name Already in his royal inscrip-tions Sargon stated ndash with an unusual point of detail ndash that he had singled out aspecialized military corps from among the Samarian deportees to Assyrialdquo200 chariots for my royal bodyguard I mustered from among themrdquo Dalleyalso noted that already in 853 BCE at the battle of Qarqar Ahab of Israel hadbrought solely his chariotry to face Shalmaneser IIIrsquos invasion and thus suggest-ed that ndash at a distance of some 130 years ndash chariotry could have been a tradition-al military technique that was still practiced in Samaria with particular skill

Now for the second and final point What longer-term perspectives wereopened for the Assyrians by the fall of the Northern Kingdom My answer tothis question is simple although I hope not viewable as simplistic the fall ofSamaria removed a possible obstacle for the Assyrian king to make his way tothe southern sector of the veritable ldquoisthmusrdquo of territory of Palestine whichreached the border with Egypt With Samaria out of the way as an independentpolitical entity Sargonrsquos action was quick and relentless after his victory over

a decision by the Assyrian receiving authority (eg on the basis of the horsesrsquo type or physicalconditions) Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part I no 110 Finkelstein The Forgotten Kingdom 133ndash35 Stephanie Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sar-gon IIrdquo Iraq 47 (1985) 31ndash48 See also Karen Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume


Hamath and its allies (720 BCE) the Assyrian ruler led his troops towards Phil-istia and his successive actions were marked by a drive to solidly establish As-syrian rule in the southernmost Levant Such actions comprised the repression ofrebellious cities and keeping neighboring nomadic Northern Arabian tribes atbay but especially ndash agreeing with another assertion by Narsquoaman ndash ldquopushingthe Egyptians back to their homeland with the intervening expanses of Sinaipreventing any immediate threat to the Assyrian holdings in Philistiardquosup3⁸ Howev-er in the very same breath that the ldquoclear and present dangerrdquo of Egyptianarmed thrusts to the Levant was to be countered Sargonrsquos grand strategy foresawthe advantage and actually the necessity of keeping the flow of commerce withEgypt open and fluid for this reason he could state with pride in the sameNimrud prism inscription that ldquoI opened the sealed h[ar]bour (k[a]-a-ri) ofEgypt mingled Assyrians and Egyptians together and made them trade witheach otherrdquosup3⁹

Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Brook of Egypt and Assyrian Policy on the Border of Egyptrdquo TA 6(1979) 83 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 88 314 Annals ll 17ndash 18

Why Israel 99

Karen Radner

The ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo in the Contextof the Resettlement Programme of theAssyrian Empire

1 Introduction

This paper deals with the ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo the people removed by the As-syrian authorities from the territories of the conquered kingdom of Israel andespecially its capital city Samaria (Assyrian Samerina) to be resettled elsewherein the Empirersquos vast holdings

For the Assyrian Empire such a procedure was routine During the imperialperiod from the 9th to the 7th century BCE an extensive centrally directed reset-tlement programme saw population groups from all corners of the enormousgeographical area under Assyrian control being moved across great distancesto be settled within the provinces making up the ldquoland of Aššurrdquo Populationswithin the boundaries of the Empire were relocated replacing and being re-placed by people who were themselves moved in complex circular movementsthat were carefully planned and executed over the course of several years Pop-ulations taken from outside the provincial system however were not replaced

Assuming that the 43 cases where numbers are given in the Assyrian royalinscriptions are a representative sample of the 157 cases of mass resettlement at-tested in the period from the 9th to the mid-7th century it has been calculated thatthese instances resulted in the relocation of 4400000 plusmn 900000 peoplesup1 ndash a gi-gantic figure especially in a world whose population was a small fraction of to-dayrsquos Even if one has qualms about accepting the figures given in the Assyrianroyal inscriptions as accuratesup2 it is clear that from the viewpoint of the crownresettling people across the Empire was a mass effort meant to affect all landsunder Assyrian rule

Today the Assyrian strategy of mass resettlement is often described with theloaded term ldquodeportationrdquo and the people affected are called ldquodeporteesrdquo ndash mostprominently in the title of Bustenay Odedrsquos important monograph Mass Deporta-

Bustenay Oded Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (WiesbadenHarrassowitz 1979) 19ndash21 with fn 5 Cf Marco De Odorico The Use of Numbers and Quantifications in the Assyrian Royal Inscrip-tions (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1995)

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-006

tions and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire To a certain extent the use ofthese terms is misleading given the strong associations with concepts such asmarginalisation and extermination that are simply not applicable The Assyriankings used the phrases ldquoto count among the people of the land of Aššurrdquo and ldquototurn into a part of the land of Aššurrdquo in their inscriptions when referring to theintegration of people and territoriessup3 The explicit goal was the creation of an in-tegrated economically highly developed culture and society of ldquoAssyriansrdquo nolonger seen as an ethnic label ldquoAssyrianrdquo was from the 9th century onwards adesignation referring to all the kingrsquos subjects regardless of their origins⁴

People were chosen for resettlement in a considered selection process oftenin the aftermath of warfare that had reduced their original home to ruins Howexactly the Assyrian authorities handled the selection is unclear although pal-ace decorations from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (r 744ndash727 BCE) onwards il-lustrate proceedings by showing usually in the context of the capture of enemycities pairs of scribes⁵ logging people as well as booty Very few administrativerecords of the Assyrian Empire have survived despite the fact that these wereoriginally written in duplicate in Assyrian cuneiform and Aramaic alphabetscript⁶ Alas the preferred writing material of the Assyrian administration waswax-covered wooden writing boards which allowed much more text to be re-corded than the more durable clay tablets and like the leather scrolls used forAramaic these did not endure the ravages of time⁷ The fragmentary recordsthat have survived are hard to interpret also due to the innate terseness ofthis internal documentation Frederick Mario Fales and John Nicholas Postgatehave interpreted various texts from Nineveh as lists of ldquodeportees and displacedpersonsrdquo⁸ but what stage in the lengthy process of relocation they preciselydocument is difficult to assess As Fales and Postgate state these are lists of in-

As discussed by Oded Mass Deportations 81ndash91 Cf Peter Machinist ldquoAssyrians on Assyria in the First Millennium BCrdquo in Anfaumlnge politischenDenkens in der Antike die nahoumlstlichen Kulturen und die Griechen ed Kurt Raaflaub (MunichOldenbourg 1993) 77ndash 104 John M Russell Sennacheribrsquos Palace without Rival at Nineveh (Chicago London ChicagoUniversity Press 1991) 28ndash31 with list of attestations in fn 36 Eg Karen Radner ldquoSchreiberkonventionen im assyrischen Reich Sprachen und Schriftsys-temerdquo in Assur Gott Stadt und Land ed Johannes Renger (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2011)388 Frederick Mario Fales and John Nicholas Postgate Imperial Administrative Records Part I Pal-ace and Temple Administration (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 1992) XIII Frederick Mario Fales and John Nicholas Postgate Imperial Administrative Records Part IIProvincial and Military Administration (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 1995) nos 144ndash99

102 Karen Radner

dividuals ldquoreduced to a sea of namesrdquo⁹ lacking the context that might help us toharness them for our present purposes However it emerges unequivocally thatprofessions and family ties were of key interest to the compilers of this data

Whenever the Assyrian sources specify who was to be relocated they namethe urban elites craftsmen scholars and military men The very best example isthe summary of the people taken away from the Egyptian city of Memphis afterits capture in 671 BCE according to an inscription of Esarhaddon (r 680ndash669BCE)

ldquoThe seed of his fatherrsquos house descendants of earlier kings [hellip] of his houselsquoThird Menrsquo (of chariot crews) charioteers [hellip] rein-holders archers shield bearers[hellip] incantation priests dream interpreters (ḫarṭibē) [hellip] veterinarians Egyptian scribes[hellip] snake-charmers together with their helpers kāṣiru-craftsmen singers bakers[cooks] brewers (together with) their suppliers [hellip clothes] menders hunters leatherworkers [hellip] wheelwrights shipwrights [hellip] iron-smiths [hellip]rdquosup1⁰

Although fragmentarily persevered the order of the list is clear enough it beginswith the members of the royal family followed by professional soldiers and thena wide range of highly trained experts as well as their support personnel Odedsup1sup1calculated that 85 of the documented cases of resettlement concern peoplethat were transplanted to Central Assyria the area between the cities Assur inthe south Nineveh in the north and Arbela in the east Indeed some of theEgyptian specialists mentioned in the inscription appear shortly after at Esar-haddonrsquos court in Nineveh three dream interpreters (ḫarṭibē) three Egyptianscribes and a physician (certainly a profession originally mentioned in the enu-meration of the royal inscription) with an Egyptian name appear in a roster thatidentifies the scholars in the royal entouragesup1sup2 In addition private legal textsfeaturing Egyptians and even entire archives of Egyptian families have been

Fales and Postgate Imperial Administrative Records Part II XXX Erle Leichty The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon King of Assyria (680ndash669 BC) (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) no 9 irsquo 6rsquondash 17rsquo Oded Mass Deportations 28 Fales and Postgate Imperial Administrative Records Part I no 1 ii 15 (physician Ṣihuru) revi 12ndash ii 7 (dream interpreters [A]guršicirc Rarsquoši and Ṣihucirc Egyptian scribes Huru Nimmurau and[Hu]ruaṣu) photograph httpcdliuclaeduP335693 (accessed 102017) Discussed by KarenRadner ldquoThe Assyrian King and His Scholars The Syro-Anatolian and the Egyptian Schoolsrdquoin Of God(s) Trees Kings and Scholars Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Par-pola ed Mikko Luukko Saana Svaumlrd and Raija Mattila (Helsinki Finnish Oriental Society2009) 222ndash26

The ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo in the Context of the Resettlement Programme 103

found in Nineveh and Assur demonstrating the presence of populations fromthe Nile in the cities of Assyrian heartland (Fig 1)sup1sup3

The specialists from conquered regions such as the Egyptian experts wereto generate knowledge and wealth and to contribute to the economic and cultur-al development of the EmpireWhen the topic of resettlement is discussed in theroyal inscriptions they either employ a vocabulary of violence and pillage fit-tingly for the context of war or else the language of horticulture which likensthe deportees to precious trees that are uprooted and replanted in the best pos-sible circumstances by that most conscientious of gardeners the king of Assy-

Nineveh Raija Mattila Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh Part II AssurbanipalThrough Sin-šarru-iškun (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 2002) nos 426ndash56 especiallynos 435 and 442 (private archive found near the Šamaš Gate) Assur Betina Faist Alltagstexteaus neuassyrischen Archiven und Bibliotheken der Stadt Assur (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2007)nos 78ndash 101 114 (ldquoArchive N31rdquo) Karen Radner ldquoDie beiden neuassyrischen Privatarchiverdquo inAusgrabungen in Assur Wohnquartiere in der Weststadt Teil 1 ed Peter A Miglus Karen Radnerand Franciszek M Stepniowski (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2016) 121ndash26 (ldquoArchive N52brdquo)

Fig 1 The deportees taken from Memphis in 671 BCE were relocated in Central Assyria and canbe traced in particular in Nineveh and Assur The black line indicates the extent of the Assyrianprovincial system whose areas were under direct Assyrian control in the year 670 BCE AsMemphis was beyond the provincial system the authorities did not aim to replace the depletedpopulation of the city Map prepared by Andrea Squitieri after a draft of the author

104 Karen Radner

riasup1⁴ just like the gardener transfers valuable plants to a nurturing new environ-ment that they in turn will enhance the wise ruler allocated his people wherethey best benefitted the Empire In the case of carefully selected specialiststhe Assyrian crown clearly regarded their resettlement as a privilege and an in-dication of high esteem But the transplantation of people was certainly alsoused as a means of punishment as we shall see below

In general the people selected for resettlement were moved together withtheir families and their possessions and the authoritiesrsquo key objective was clear-ly to keep them healthy and well supplied during their treksup1⁵ But the resettle-ment programme of course brutally divided existing communities according tothe needs of the Empire ndash into those who had to leave and those who were al-lowed to stay or conversely into those who were allowed to leave and thosewho had to stay This was a highly effective way of minimising the risk of rebel-lion against the central authority

In the following we will discuss resettlement from and to Samaria analy-sing one of several overlapping cycles for transportation in detail before weturn to the Assyrian archival texts as a source for the fate of some of the peoplethat were made to leave Samaria Some of this material has long been connectedto the ldquoLost Tribesrdquo but other texts ndash in particular a letter concerning Samariansin Dur-Šarruken the new capital city of Sargon II (r 721ndash705 BCE) and a salecontract originally from Guzana ndash have not yet been considered in this context

2 The Inhabitants of Samaria Old and NewWhere to and Whence from

According to the testimony of 2Kgs 17 (Fig 2) inhabitants of Samaria were movedto Halahhu the region around Sargonrsquos new capital city of Dur-Šarruken in Cen-tral Assyriasup1⁶ Guzana (Tell Halaf on the border between Turkey and Syria)sup1⁷ on

Karen Radner ldquoHow Did the Neo-Assyrian King Perceive His Land and Its Resourcesrdquo inRainfall and Agriculture in Northern Mesopotamia ed Remko M Jas (Leiden Nederlands Insti-tuut voor het Nabije Oosten 2000) 233ndash46 Karen Radner ldquoEconomy Society and Daily Life in the Neo-Assyrian Periodrdquo in A Compan-ion to Assyria ed Eckart Frahm (Wiley Malden MA 2017) 210ndash 11 Karen Radner ldquoProvinz C Assyrienrdquo in RlA 11 ed Michael P Streck (2008) 54 Ariel BaggDie Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 2 Zentralassyrien und benachbarteGebiete Aumlgypten und die arabische Halbinsel (Wiesbaden Reichert 2017) 194ndash95 Radner ldquoProvinzrdquo 51 Bagg Die Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 2187ndash89


the Khabur River a tributary of the Euphrates which joins that river near Deir ez-Zor and the towns of the Medes In turn people from Northern Babylonianamely Babylon Kuthah Cutha (Tell Ibrahim) and Sepharvaim most probablythe twin cities of Sipparsup1⁸ from Hamathsup1⁹ in western Syria and from the uniden-tified city of Avvasup2⁰ were settled in Samaria and its towns

ldquoIn the 9th year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelitesto Assyria He settled them in Halah in Gozan on the Habor River and in the towns of theMedesrdquo (2Kgs 176 translation New International Version)ldquoThe king of Assyria brought people from Babylon Kuthah Avva Hamath and Sepharvaimand settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites They took over Samariaand lived in its townsrdquo (2Kgs 1724 translation New International Version)

As we shall see below Assyrian archival sources firmly support the identificationof Halah = Assyrian Halahhu and Gozan = Assyrian Guzana as a destination forpeople resettled from Samaria At present there is no explicit mention of Samar-ians in the provinces established in 716 BCE in Median territory but there are

Namely Sippar-Yahrurum (Tell Abu Habbah) and Sippar-Amnanum (Tell ed-Der) see Her-mann Gasche and Caroline Janssen ldquoSipparrdquo in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology inthe Ancient Near East 5 ed Eric M Meyers (Oxford Oxford University Press 1997) 47ndash49 Analternative interpretation for SPRWYYM that however still places the site in Babylonia was sug-gested by Ran Zadok ldquoGeographical and Onomastic Notesrdquo Journal of the Ancient Near EasternSociety 8 (1976) 115ndash16 who connected this place name with the city of Ša-barecirc (URUŠaacutendashbar-re-e) one of 39 fortified cities of the land of the Bit-Amukani that Sennacherib captured in 703 BCEAlbert Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria(704ndash681 BC) Part 1 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2012) no 1 45 Kirk Grayson and JamieNovotny The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681 BC) Part 2 (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2014) no 213 44 Ariel Bagg Die Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 1 Die Levante (Wies-baden Reichert 2008) 87ndash91 As far as I can see there are two toponyms in the Assyrian sources from the late 8th centuryBCE that could arguably match the name given in the Bible (1) A city called Abacirc in the UpperTigris region near modern Diyarbakır is attested in a letter from an Assyrian official to Sargon IIthat mentions ldquothese people from Abacircrdquo (UNMEŠ an-nu-te URUA-ba-a-a) and the ldquopass of [Ab]acircrdquo(neacute-ri-bi [URUA-ba]-a) Giovanni B Lanfranchi and Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sar-gon II Part II Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces (Helsinki Helsinki UniversityPress 1990) no 24 7 14ndash 15 photograph httpcdliuclaeduP334350 (accessed 102017) Wedo not know about deportations from that particular region during the time of Sargon II(2) A city called Amacirc (URUA-ma-a) on the Uqnu branch of the Tigris in Gambulu in eastern Bab-ylonia that is mentioned in the very fitting context of Sargonrsquos conquest of Babylonia in his Dur-Šarruken Annals line 292 Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (GoumlttingenCuvillier Verlag 1994) 149 330 On the latter see also Zadok Journal of the Ancient Near EasternSociety 8 (1976) 120ndash21

106 Karen Radner

very limited archival sources available for this part of the Empire and none dis-covered locallysup2sup1

Fig 2 According to the Book of Kings the destinations of the people removed from Samaria are(marked with a circle symbol) Dur-Šarruken in the Halahhu region in the northern part of theroughly triangular Assyrian core region Guzana on the Khabur river and the ldquotowns of theMedesrdquo with the provincial centres Kišessim and Harhar The places of origins of the peopleresettled in Samaria are (marked with a diamond symbol) the Northern Babylonian citiesBabylon Cutha and Sippar and Hamath in western Syria the location of Avva is presentlyuncertain The black line indicates the extent of the Assyrian provincial system whose areaswere under direct Assyrian control in the year 708 BCE Map prepared by Andrea Squitieri after adraft of the author

On the one hand there is the correspondence of the Assyrian officials appointed by Sargon IIto administrate the new province of Kar-Šarruken = Harhar written in the period after it was es-tablished 716 BCE in Median territory Andreas Fuchs and Simo Parpola The Correspondence ofSargon II Part III Letters from Babylonia and the Eastern Provinces (Helsinki Helsinki UniversityPress 2001) nos 83ndash 110 none of the letters refer explicitly to deportee populations In addi-tion there is one private legal text from 715 BCE (Faist Alltagstexte no 15) that documentsthe sale of a garden in Kar-Nabucirc the new Assyrian designation for Kis eslu an Assyrian-control-led settlement in the province of Harhar This sale contract was unearthed in Assur but as dis-cussed by Karen Radner ldquoAssyria and the Medesrdquo in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran edDaniel T Potts (New York Oxford University Press 2013) 450 it was certainly written in WesternIran as not only the location of the garden but also the involvement of the following witnessessuggests who must have been present at Kar-Nabucirc while the Assyrian army was active there


The Assyrian sources allow us to a certain extent to recreate the geographyand chronology of the complex and protracted arrangements required to relocatethe people of Samaria and to replace them in their former home The resettle-ment of Samaria took at the very least eight years and possibly even longerOne region from where population groups were taken to Samaria was affectedby Assyrian military action only in 715 BCE Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Annals men-tion the transplantation of members of different Arab tribes (namely TamudiIbadidi Marsimani and Hayapacirc) to the city of Samaria in that yearsup2sup2 This infor-mation highlights also that the data given in the Book of Kings is not exhaustiveas no mention is made there of Arabs being settled in Samaria The territoriesfrom where these Arab population groups were taken were not incorporatedinto the Assyrian provincial system and as the Assyrian authorities only ever ex-changed populations within the areas that they controlled directly no one wasdispatched to replace the people taken from the Arabian Peninsula

Whether this is also the case for the Babylonian populations brought to Sa-maria depends on the chronology of their removal ndash before or after Babyloniaseceded from the Empire The region revolted during the murky circumstancesthat had brought Sargon to the throne and in 721 BCE the Chaldean leader Mar-duk-apla-iddina of Bit-Yakin was appointed King of Babylonsup2sup3 A first attempt toregain control in 720 BCE was unsuccessful with Sargonrsquos forces defeated at theBattle of Der and Babylonia was lost to the Empire for twelve years During thattime the Assyrian crown certainly would not have had the possibility nor theinclination to replenish its population In 710 BCE Sargon invaded again andeventually secured the Babylonian throne for himself It is probable althoughnot certain that the Northern Babylonian people settled in Samaria weretaken as a consequence of Sargonrsquos recapture of the region between 710 and708 BCE If this is accepted then people were still being relocated to Samariamore than a decade after the city had been conquered If one argues for an ear-

S amas-belu-uṣur identified in the text as an ldquoAssyrian magnaterdquo (and very probably the gover-nor of Arzuhina) Emuq-Ass ur the commander of Kar-Nabucirc the eunuch Tarditu-Aššur and Ibucirca horse trader (that is an agent in charge of procuring horses as part of Assyrian military activ-ity) Vendor is Emuq-Assurrsquos Third Man a member of the commanderrsquos chariot crew who is stat-ed to have received the garden as a gift from the commander himself No-one mentioned in thedocument including the remaining witnesses has any obvious Samarian connection Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Annals lines 120ndash3 edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 110320 Karen Radner ldquoRevolts in the Assyrian Empire Succession Wars Rebellions Against a FalseKing and Independence Movementsrdquo in Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World andthe Near East In the Crucible of Empire ed John J Collins and Joseph G Manning (Leiden Brill2016) 51

108 Karen Radner

lier date of the uprooting of the Babylonian groups then the relocation of theArabs in 715 BCE provides an end date

3 An Example of Circular Interchange Samaria ndashKišessim ndash Assur ndash Hamath ndash Samaria

The resettlement of Samaria and its people necessitated several overlapping cir-cular movements one of which can be reconstructed in full (Fig 3) It is the routelinking the towns of the Medes (in a region first conquered in 716 BCE) withAssur (where Medes are first attested in a text from 714 BCE) and Hamath(where Assyrians from the heartland were settled after their 720 BCE rebellionwas subdued) and finally Samaria (where people from Hamath were relocatedafter the crushing of their own insurgency in 720 BCE)

Fig 3 One of many contemporaneous circular interchanges of people being moved across theEmpire People from Samaria conquered in 722 BCE are moved to Kišessim one of the ldquotownsof the Medesrdquo first conquered in 716 BCE whose residents are brought to Assur in turn aftera revolt in 720 BCE insurgents from Assur and other places in the roughly triangular Assyriancore region are relocated to Hamath after a rebellion there had been quelled in 720 BC andpeople of Hamath are sent to Samaria The black line indicates the extent of the Assyrianprovincial system whose areas were under direct Assyrian control in the year 708 BCE Mapprepared by Andrea Squitieri after a draft of the author


Letrsquos start with the ldquotowns of the Medesrdquo In 716 BCE Sargon created twonew provinces in Median-controlled territory in the modern Iranian provinceof Hamadan their centres were Kišessim renamed Kar-Nergal (ldquoTrading quayof the god Nergalrdquo corresponding to the settlement mound of modern Najafeha-bad) and Harhar renamed Kar-Šarruken (ldquoSargonrsquos trading quayrdquo correspond-ing to Tepe Giyan)sup2⁴ Serious complications plagued the establishment of theseprovinces as Sargonrsquos correspondence with his officials highlights On the onehand the local Assyrian administration suffered from the effects of the unforgiv-ing weather conditions snow and cold slowed down building up the necessaryinfrastructuresup2⁵ and frequently cut off the new provinces from all communicationwith Central Assyriasup2⁶ On the other hand local insurgence was a pressing prob-lem already in 715 BCE the new provinces rose in rebellion on a scale that thelocal Assyrian officials were unable to contain and the imperial army had to re-turn in order to regain control Once subdued four of the most important Medianstrongholds were turned into Assyrian fortresses with new names assigned tothem that associated them with some of the most important Assyrian deities Ki-s es lu became Kar-Nabu and Qindau was renamed Kar-Sicircn while Anzaria was re-branded as Kar-Adad and Bit-Bagaia as Kar-Issarsup2⁷ These and the two provincialcentres are arguably the Book of Kingsrsquo ldquotowns of the Medesrdquo as the imperialresettlement programme now targeted these places 4820 persons were takenaway according to Sargonrsquos inscriptions and in addition 4000 enemy warriorslost their heads as the consequence of the 715 BCE rebellionsup2⁸ And yet the con-flict continued and the Assyrian army had to return twice more to assert the Em-pirersquos control The troubles subsided only after 713 BCE once a two-fold systemof power saw the Assyrian provincial administration cooperate with the localcity lords who were left in power under the proviso that they formally acceptedAssyrian sovereigntysup2⁹ It is only at that time that the region can be reasonablyassumed to become a viable destination for settlers brought in by the Assyriancrown ndash The distance from Samaria to Kišessim is about 1300 km as thecrow flies with the Syrian Desert and the Zagros mountain range in between

Radner ldquoAssyria and the Medesrdquo 444ndash47 Fuchs and Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part III nos 85 98 100 Eg Fuchs and Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part III no 83 Radner ldquoAssyria and the Medesrdquo 450 Dur-Šarruken Annals lines 109ndash 15 210ndash 11 Dur-Šarruken Display Inscription lines 64ndash65edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 108ndash109 319 Karen Radner ldquoAn Assyrian View on the Medesrdquo in Continuity of Empire () Assyria MediaPersia ed Giovanni B Lanfranchi Michael Roaf and Robert Rollinger (Padova sargon2003) 53ndash55

110 Karen Radner

Some of the people deported from the Median region were moved to the cityof Assur where people from Hundur the hinterland of Kis essim are attestedfrom the reign of Sargon II onward The first attestation occurs in a detailedand meticulously dated log of a series of events that took place in the Ešarra tem-ple at Assur in the year 714 BCE over a period of two days during the month ofṬebet An altar had been damaged when another heavy piece of temple furniturewas being moved and the report served to record in detail the steps taken to re-pair the damage to the sacred objects and to restore equilibrium to the fragiletemple atmosphere The repairs included some apparently specialised polishingwork undertaken by men from Hundursup3⁰ who must have been settled at somepoint before these events most likely as part of the group of 4820 peopletaken away from the new provinces in Iran in 715 BCE Hundureans are verywell attested in Assur in the 7th century BCE when the private archives foundin two adjoining buildings document the business affairs of an extended well-to-do family of Hundureans for the period from 681 BCE until the conquest ofAssur in 614 BCEsup3sup1 They can only be identified as the descendants of the erst-while deportees because even a century after their ancestors had arrived inAssur they still labelled themselves as ldquoHundureanrdquo (presumably as this hadnow taken on a professional meaning) but none of the people attested in thesetexts bear Iranian names ndash The distance from Kišessim to Assur is about500 km as the crow flies with the massive Zagros mountain range in between

Letrsquos turn to the next stop on our circular route through the Empire the cityof Hamath In the course of Sargon IIrsquos ascension to the throne he met with op-position in the core region including the city of Assur By 720 BCE he was ableto crush this resistance against his rule The inscription of a royal stele that oncestood in the city of Hamath describes how he treated his detractors Ever themerciful ruler he refrained from killing them and instead had them moved tothe war-torn city of Hamath this relocation is clearly meant to punish and cor-responds probably closest to our modern notions of a deportation

Simo Parpola Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Cor-pus Project 2017) no 55 17 KURHu-un-dir-a-a uacute-ṣip-pu ldquoThe Hundureans polished itrdquo Archives N9 and N10 Editions Frederick Mario Fales and Liane Jakob-Rost ldquoNeo-AssyrianTexts from Assur Private Archives in the Vorderasiatisches Museum of Berlin Part 1rdquo SAAB 5(1991) 3ndash 157 discussed by Kaisa Aringkerman ldquoThe lsquoAussenhaken Arearsquo in the City of Assur duringthe Second Half of the 7th Century BCrdquo SAAB 13 (1999ndash2001) 217ndash72 Radner ldquoAssyria and theMedesrdquo 447ndash49


ldquoI pardoned 6300 guilty Assyrians and had mercy on them I settled them in the city ofHamath I imposed on them taxes and tribute work obligations and conscription justlike my royal fathers had imposed on Irhulenu of Hamathrdquo sup3sup2

The western Syrian city of Hamath (modern Hama) is situated in the fertile Or-ontes valley It had been the capital of the eponymous kingdom whose most fa-mous ruler was Irhulenu a king of the 9th century BCE From 738 BCE onwardsTiglath-pileser III of Assyria invaded this kingdom and integrated it in two stagesinto the Assyrian Empire in 732 BCE Hamath became part of the newly estab-lished Assyrian province of Manṣuatesup3sup3 During the troubled times when the As-syrian crown passed under very unclear circumstances from Shalmaneser V(r 726ndash722 BCE) to Sargon II Hamath was the centre of a large-scale insurrec-tion The western territories including the cities Samaria and Damascus man-aged to break free from Assyrian control and rallied behind one Ilu-birsquodi(ldquoGod is behind merdquo alternatively written Yau-birsquodi ldquoYahweh is behind merdquo)This ldquoman of humble descentrdquo as Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Display Inscriptioncalls himsup3⁴ aimed to resurrect the ancient kingdom of Hamath with himselfas its king Sargon squashed these ambitions in 720 BCE captured and executedIlu-birsquodi and wrecked the city of Hamathsup3⁵ During this same tumultuous timeinhabitants of Central Assyria opposed Sargonrsquos rise to power and after thestruggle for control was decided in his favour they had to be removed fromthe Empirersquos power centre Deporting them to Hamath achieved this and byhelping to rebuild the ruined city they were meant to repay the mercy of theirking who had graciously refrained from executing them for their disloyalty ndashThe distance from Assur to Hamath is about 650 km as the crow flies

This brings us back to Samaria where according to the Book of Kings peo-ple from Hamath were settled to replace the deported Samarians It is unclearwhether this happened before or after Hamath supported the insurgence ofIlu-birsquodi both scenarios are possible although I find it more likely that the relo-cations were authorised by the Assyrian crown only in the aftermath of the de-feat of the rebels in 720 BCE The distance from Hamath to Samaria is about350 km as the crow flies

J David Hawkins ldquoThe New Sargon Stele from Hamardquo in From the Upper Sea to the LowerSea Studies in the History of Assyria and Babylonia in Honour of A K Grayson ed Grant Frame(Leiden Istanbul Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten 2004) 156-57 160 (Side B) Radner ldquoProvinzrdquo 62 no 54 66 Dur-Šarruken Display Inscription line 33 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 200ndash201 345 Radner ldquoRevolts in the Assyrian Empirerdquo 49ndash51

112 Karen Radner

We are fortunate in that the sources allow us to reconstruct this one com-plete cycle of many circular population exchanges that affected Samaria Thisone cycle saw people being moved in various stages over a decade between722 BCE and (at least) 713 BCE It highlights that within the regions of the pro-vincial system the Assyrian crown had no interest in creating empty spacesPopulations were replaced in complicated patterns that required a great dealof organisation and planning but as we have already stated above the meagresurviving administrative records do little to enlighten us about the specific per-sonnel and processes involved

4 Who Was Taken Away from Samaria

Letrsquos start again with the testimony of the Book of Kings

ldquoIt was reported to the king of Assyria lsquoThe people you deported and resettled in the townsof Samaria do not know what the god of that country requires helliprsquo Then the king of Assyriagave this order ldquoHave one of the priests (kohanim) you took captive from Samaria go backto live there and teach the people what the god of the land requiresrdquo (2Kgs 1726 27 trans-lation New International Version)

It identifies the kohanim the ldquopriestsrdquo as a group of people that had been re-moved from the towns of Samaria wholesale The Assyrian sources do not spe-cifically mention cultic experts from Samaria as deportees but they certainlyconfirm that the Assyrian crown had selected highly trained specialists for relo-cation elsewhere in the Empire Incidentally the Assyrian references support re-settlement of Samarians in two of the areas mentioned in the Book of Kings Ha-lahhu and Guzana in the Khabur valley

41 Samarian Chariot Troops Integrated into the AssyrianRoyal Forces

When discussing the relocation of the people of Samaria three inscriptions ofSargon II specifically mention the Samarian chariotry and its absorption intothe Assyrian armed forces The Display Inscription and the Annals from Sargonrsquospalace in Dur-Šarruken (Khorsabad) feature 50 gišGIGIRMEŠ while the inscrip-tion on a prism found at Kalhu list 2-me gišGIGIRMEŠ The apparent contradic-tion can be easily explained as the logogram gišGIGIR is used both for the chariot(narkabtu) and the men of the chariot crew (bēl narkabti) The Samarian chariot


corps fought with heavily armed chariots whose crew consisted of four meneach so that 200 chariot troops correspond to the crews of 50 chariots

(a) Sargonrsquos Kalhu Prism iv 31ndash41 (translation after Frahm in this volumeText 8)sup3⁶

ldquo27280 people together with [their] chariots and the gods in whom they trusted I counted[as] spoil I gathered from their midst 200 chariot (troop)s for my royal contingent The restof them I settled within Assyria I resettled Samaria making it more (populous) than be-fore I had people from (various) lands I had conquered enter into it One of my eunuchsI installed over them as a provincial governor and I counted them among the people ofAssyriardquo

(b) Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Annals lines 15ndash7 (translation after Frahm in this vol-ume Text 7)sup3⁷

ldquo[27280 of the people living in its (Samariarsquos) midst] I led away From [their midst I gath-ered together] fifty chariot (troop)s for my royal contingent [The rest of them I settled with-in Assyria] I resettled Samaria] making it more (populous) than before [I had] people from(various) lands I had conquered [enter it One of my eunuchs I installed over them as a pro-vincial governor] I imposed [tribute] and taxes upon them as (if they were) Assyriansrdquo

(c) Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Display Inscription lines 23ndash25 (translation afterFrahm in this volume Text 9)sup3⁸

ldquo27280 (Variants 27290 24280) of the people living in its (Samariarsquos) midst I led awayFrom their midst I gathered together fifty chariots I let the rest take up their craftsagain I installed over them one of my eunuchs and imposed on them tribute (as under)a previous kingrdquo

The armies of the 8th century BCE knew two chariot typessup3⁹ The light versionwas drawn by two horses and manned by a three-man crew the chariot driveran archer as the fighter and the so-called ldquoThird Manrdquo who shielded the others⁴⁰The heavily armoured version was drawn by four horses and had a fourth crewmember who provided additional protection (Fig 4) These tank-like construc-

Edition Cyril J Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954) 173ndash98 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 87ndash88 313ndash 14 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 196ndash97 344 Robin Archer ldquoChariotry to Cavalry Developments in the Early First Millenniumrdquo in NewPerspectives on Ancient Warfare ed Garrett G Fagan and Matthew Trundle (Leiden Brill2010) 76 For the terminology see Karen Radner Die neuassyrischen Texte aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad (BerlinReimer 2002) 9ndash 10

114 Karen Radner

tions were much taller than the lighter models with wheel diameters of up to 2meters They were used to fire at enemy archers at close range and while theylacked in speed they very effectively served the twin purposes of show-of-forceand intimidation⁴sup1 The Samarian chariotry was of this second type

The integration of fighters from defeated armies into the permanent Assyrianforces was routine and always focused on chariotry and cavalry that is thoseunits with the most specialised training The Samarian chariotry was not merelyintegrated into the Assyrian army but specifically into the ldquoroyal contingentrdquo

Andreas Fuchs ldquoAssyria at War Strategy and Conductrdquo in The Oxford Handbook of Cunei-form Culture ed Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson (Oxford Oxford University Press 2011) 394

Fig 4 Tank-like chariot with a four-man crew consisting of driver archer and two shield-bearersDetail from the wall decoration of Assurbanipalrsquos palace at Nineveh Reproduced from T DezsoumlThe Assyrian Army 1 The Structure of the Neo-Assyrian Army 2 Cavalry and Chariotry (BudapestEoumltvoumls University Press 2012) pl 18 no 31 Used with the authorrsquos kind permission


(kiṣir šarrūti) of the armed forces that was under the direct command of theking⁴sup2

Some of the members of the Samarian chariotry are attested about a decadelater in an administrative text from Kalhu that matches groups of commanders ofchariot teams (rab urāte) with their superior officers The document may havebeen prepared in order to organise the armed forces that Sargon dispatchedagainst Babylonia as the text can be assigned to the period c 710ndash708 BCE⁴sup3A group of thirteen commanders is associated with the city of Samaria

ldquoIbba-dalacirc Dalacirc-ahiYāu-gacirc Atamru Ahi-idri Abdi-Milki Bel-duri Narmenacirc Gabbecirc SamarsquoAhi-idri Bahicirc Ahi-Yāu in total 13 (from) Samaria command of Nabucirc-belu-karsquorsquoinrdquo ⁴⁴

The chariot team commanders mostly bear names with a clear West Semitic ety-mology and two have names formed with the divine element Yahweh Yāu-gacircldquoYahweh is exaltedrdquo⁴⁵ and Ahi-Yāu ldquoMy brother is Yahwehrdquo⁴⁶

At about the same time in 709 BCE a private legal document found in Nine-veh⁴⁷ mentions a chariot driver called Nadbi-Yāu (ldquoImpelled by Yahwehrdquo⁴⁸) as awitness to a slave sale with Šumma-ilani a chariot driver of the royal contin-gent as the purchaser As Šumma-ilani was a chariot driver of the royal corpsit is therefore likely that also his witness Nadbi-Yāu was a member of this partof the Assyrian armed forces As we have seen the Samarian chariotry waspart of the royal contingent and several of its known members had Yahwehnames It therefore seems a reasonable hypothesis to identify also Nadbi-Yāuas one of the Samarian chariot corps

For a discussion of kiṣir šarrūti see Tamas Dezso The Assyrian Army II Recruitment and Lo-gistics (Budapest Eoumltvoumls University Press 2016) 16 Stephanie Dalley and John Nicholas Postgate Texts from Fort Shalmaneser (London BritishSchool of Archaeology in Iraq 1984) 176 Dalley and Postgate Texts from Fort Shalmaneser no 99 ii 16ndash23 Discussed by StephanieDalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon IIrdquo Iraq 47(1985) 31ndash48 Daniel Schwemer ldquoIāu-gacircrdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2I ed Heath-er D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2000) 497 Steven Cole ldquoAḫi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 1I ed Karen Rad-ner (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1998) 63 no 1 Theodore Kwasman and Simo Parpola Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of NinevehPart I Tiglath-Pileser III through Esarhaddon (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 1991) no 34rev 9 mNa-ad-bindashIa-a-uacute LUacuteDIBndashKUŠPAMEŠ Photograph httpcdliuclaeduP335181 (ac-cessed 102017) Kaisa Aringkerman ldquoNadbi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2II edHeather D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001) 915

116 Karen Radner

Finally ldquoThird Men from Samariardquo (3-šuacuteMEŠ KURSa-mir-na-a-a l 6)⁴⁹ are men-tioned alongside ldquoThird Men from Hattirdquo (3-šuacuteMEŠ KURHa-t[a]-a-a l 10) and vari-ous other military personnel including chariot fighters (ENminusgišGI[GIRMEŠ] l 5) aswell as scouts (UŠminuskib-siMEŠ l 1) and outriders (kal-la-pu ši-pir-te l 2) in a frag-mentary administrative text from Kalhu recording food expenditure We can cer-tainly assign these ldquoThird Men from Samariardquo to the Samarian chariot corps ofthe royal contingent formed by Sargon II

42 Samarian Artisans Participating in the Constructionof Dur-Šarruken

As we have already stated Sargonrsquos new capital Dur-Šarruken was constructed inthe Halahhu region of the Assyrian heartland A broken letter whose author isunknown because of the fragmentary state of the tablet is one of many itemsin Sargonrsquos correspondence with his governors and high officials that dealswith details concerning the construction of this new residence city the kingrsquospride and joy⁵⁰ This letter is of interest to us because it mentions Samarianswho were to contribute to these works These included carpenters and potters(or perhaps better ceramic artists as Dur-Šarrukenrsquos architectural decorationboasted elaborate ceramic features such as glazed brick panels⁵sup1) who were todirect the work of the other deportee workers The carpenters and potters are des-ignated as ummānu an Assyrian term used for ldquoexpert specialistrdquo that denotes amaster of any discipline that requires extensive training and knowhow

Stephanie Dalley and John Nicholas Postgate The Tablets from Fort Shalmaneser (LondonBritish School of Archaeology in Iraq 1984) no 121 6 They read 3 ŠUacuteMEŠ KURSa-mir-na-a-a and did not understand this and the parallel passage in l 10 wondering in their commentarywhether ŠUacuteMEŠ was a small measuring unit (Dalley and Postgate The Tablets from Fort Shal-maneser 238ndash39) they did not offer a translation of the fragmentary text Later Kyle LawsonYounger Jr ldquoThe Deportations of the Israelitesrdquo JBL 117 (1998) 221 assumed that ŠUacute wasused as a logogram for kalucirc and interpreted this as a reference to ldquothree Samarian lamenta-tion-priestsrdquo But given that the logogram ŠUacute is not at all used in the meaning kalucirc ldquolamenterrdquoin Neo-Assyrian archival texts and in view of the otherwise exclusive presence of military per-sonnel in our text this interpretation cannot be maintained Simo Parpola ldquoThe Construction of Dur-S arrukin in Assyrian Royal Correspondencerdquo inKhorsabad le palais de Sargon II roi drsquoAssyrie ed Annie Caubet (Paris Louvre 1995) 47ndash77 Eg on the faccedilade of Room 18 of the royal palace Gordon Loud and Charles B AltmanKhorsabad Part 2 The Citadel and the Town (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1938) 77David Kertai The Architecture of Late Assyrian Royal Palaces (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 2015) 120


ldquoWhat the king my lord wrote to me lsquoProvide all the Samarians ([LUacuteSa]-mir-i-na-a-a) inyour charge with work in Dur-Šarrukenrsquo ndash I subsequently sent word to the clan leaders(LUacutena-si-ka-a-ni) saying lsquoCollect all the carpenters and potters let them come and directthe deportees (LUacutehu-ub-te) who are in Dur-Šarrukenrsquo But they did not agree to send themSurely if I had sent [threatening] letters to the clan leaders saying lsquoIf indeed you do notsend me experts (LUacuteum-ma-ni) to work for me all the people who are here [will facedire consequences]rsquo they would have promptly sent the experts to work for me Now (how-ever) following the king my lordrsquos instructions I strictly [hellip] do not argue with any of theclan leaders I have appointed the carpenters and potters [hellip]rdquo⁵sup2

Sargonrsquos official had been commanded to negotiate with the clan leaders (nasī-ku often translated as ldquosheikhrdquo⁵sup3) in order to organise the Samarian workforceand did so although he clearly found the experience frustrating Not onlydoes this letter illustrate that the innate social structures of the resettled popu-lation group had been preserved but also that the Assyrian authorities were ex-pected to respect them even if this caused friction and authority conflicts regard-ing the management of the deportee workers

43 Samarians in Guzana

There are two Assyrian archival texts that demonstrate the presence of Samari-ans in Guzana (Tell Halaf) The first is a sale contract from the year 700 BCE fea-turing a Samarian selling real estate in that city whereas the second text is a let-ter from late in the reign of Esarhaddon that mentions a Samarian as the sourceof incriminating information about a prominent family in Guzana Intriguinglyboth texts have a Libyan connection

Fuchs and Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part III no 280 slightly adapted Pho-tograph httpcdliuclaeduP334710 (accessed 102017) For a recent discussion of the term see Kyle Lawson Younger Jr A Political History of the Ara-means From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities (Atlanta GA SBL Press 2016) 50 Table 2252 56ndash57

118 Karen Radner

431 Guzana 700 BCE A Samarian Sells a Bathhouse

Although it is clear that the sale took place in Guzana the legal document record-ing this transaction was found in Assur in an archive that has no obvious linksto any of the parties involved (ldquoArchive N18rdquo⁵⁴)

ldquoInstead of his seal he impressed his fingernail Fingernail of Samarsquo Samarian son ofŠamaš-bel-ketti from Guzana owner of the bath being sold

A bath with its beams and doors and the wall between Ribṣiṣi and Hallabeše (prop-erty) of Samarsquo in the city of Guzana ndash Qišeraya chief [hellip]ean has contracted and bought itfor fifty shekels of silver The money is paid completely The bathroom in question is ac-quired and purchased Any revocation lawsuit or litigation is void

Whoever in the future at any time whether Samarsquo or his sons his grandsons hisbrothers his relatives or any litigant of his who seeks a lawsuit or litigation with Qišerayaand his sons shall place ten minas of refined silver and one mina of pure gold in the lap ofAdad who resides in Guzana shall tie four white horses at the feet of Sicircn who resides inHarran and shall return the money tenfold to its owner He shall contest in his lawsuitand not succeed

Witness Abba-hellipaya scholar witness Zanbalacirc Arab witness Abarracirc scholar of thetemple of Adad witness Uširihiuhurti Egyptian witness Adda-birsquodi merchant witnessAdad-ahu-uṣur of the temple witness Haia-ereš witness Gabricirc witness Adda-sakacirc sonof Huiri witness Palṭi-Yāu visitor witness Mizi-Yāu visitor witness Ah-abi visitor witnessMini-ahhe leather worker of Il-nemeqi witness Ṣiranucirc and Alara his hellips witness Burayachief beer brewer of the governor of Guzana [witness hellip]aya witness Nihellipni witness Nabucirc-ahu-[hellip] keeper of the tablet

Month Tishri (VII) first day eponym year of Metunu (700 BCE)One shekel of silver for his fingernailrdquo⁵⁵

The seller is a Samarian⁵⁶ and resident of Guzana with the West Semitic nameSamarsquo (ldquoHe has heardrdquo) he shares that name with one of the Samarian teamcommanders in the royal cohort (see above 41) Interestingly his father hasthe Akkadian name Šamaš-bel-ketti (ldquoThe sun god is the lord of truthrdquo) The

Olof Pederseacuten Archives and Libraries in the City of Assur a Survey of the Material from theGerman Excavations Part II (Uppsala Almqvist amp Wiksell 1986) 106ndash 107 First edition Veysel Donbaz and Simo Parpola Neo-Assyrian Legal Texts in Istanbul (Saar-bruumlcken SDV 2001) no 53 updated edition with important corrections Charles DraperldquoTwo Libyan Names in a Seventh Century Sale Document From Assurrdquo Journal of Ancient Egyp-tian Interconnections 7 (2015) 6 The reading LUacuteSi-me-ri-na-a-a ldquoSamarianrdquo was first suggested by Simonetta Ponchia Re-view of Neo-Assyrian Legal Texts in Istanbul Studien zu den Assur-Texten by Veysel Donbaz andSimo Parpola Or 72 (2003) 275ndash76 accepted by Draper ldquoTwo Libyan Namesrdquo 5 12 fn 14 (quot-ing also the approval of Ran Zadok pers comm)


transaction is witnessed by some visitors to Guzana (Assyrian ubāru⁵⁷) whosenames include the divine element Yahweh Palṭi-Yāu ldquoMy deliverance is Yah-wehrdquo⁵⁸ and mMi-zindashIa perhaps for Mahsi-Yāu ldquoWork of Yahwehrdquo⁵⁹ as well as aman identified as an Egyptian with the Libyan name Uširihiuhurti also theowner of an adjoining property bears a Libyan name Hallabeše⁶⁰

As is customary in Neo-Assyrian contracts the family members of the vendorare mentioned as potential litigants this always reflects the actual family situa-tion In this case not only are his (possibly future) sons and grandsons citedhere but also his brothers and his relatives in general This indicates that the Sa-marian Samarsquo is residing in Guzana with his extended family ndash evidence for theAssyrian policy to relocate entire family units The deities who would benefit incase of litigation against the contract are the most prominent local gods thestorm god of Guzana and the moon god of nearby Harran

432 Guzana Late 670s BCE A Samarian Informs on a Corrupt Scribe

Hallabeše the Samarian a [hellip] of the king⁶sup1 is mentioned in an anonymous letterto Esarhaddon (r 680ndash669 BCE) that presents a detailed account of the crimesand misdemeanours of various prominent individuals in Guzana The Samarianrsquostestimony concerns the scribe Tarṣicirc his wife Zazacirc and their son who are accusedof abusing their close relationship to a member of the royal family⁶sup2

The Samarian Hallabeše has a title or profession (unfortunately damaged)that links him to the king His name is of Libyan origin and he shares it withthe neighbour of his fellow Samarian Samarsquo who sold a bathhouse in Guzananearly three decades earlier If this second link between Samarians in Guzana

For a discussion of the term see Draper ldquoTwo Libyan Namesrdquo 12 fn 19 Daniel Schwemer ldquoPalṭī-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 3I edHeather D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2002) 982 Kaisa Aringkerman ldquoMaḫsi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2II edHeather D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001) 675 As discussed in detail by Draper ldquoTwo Libyan Namesrdquo 1ndash 15 Mikko Luukko and Greta Van Buylaere The Political Correspondence of Esarhaddon (Helsin-ki Helsinki University Press 2002) no 63 rev 9ndash 10 ldquo mHal-bi-šuacute URUSa-mir-i-na-a-a [x x]x xLUGAL Photograph httpcdliuclaeduP313461 (accessed 102017) According to the letter Aššur-zeru-ibni socialises with the sons of the king goes regularly toNineveh and does not only wear the golden bracelet and golden dagger that denote an Assyrianof the highest social standing but even a parasol ndash an item exclusively reserved for the royalfamily Michael Roaf ldquoSchirm (parasol) B Archaumlologischrdquo in RlA 12 ed Michael P Streck(2011) 192ndash94

120 Karen Radner

and this Libyan name is not merely a curious coincidence then we can take it asan indication that Charles Draper was correct when suggesting that the popula-tion deported from Samaria included people bearing Libyan names presumablywith roots in Egypt⁶sup3

433 Dur-Katlimmu 656 and 602 BCE More Samarians on the Khabur

For completenessrsquos sake we will briefly mention the fact that there are a numberof people with Yahweh names attested in the private legal records unearthedin the so-called Red House an elite residence at Dur-Katlimmu (Tell SheikhHamad) on the Khabur river

When an irrigated field was sold in 602 BCE one of the adjoining fields isowned by Hazaqi-Yāu (ldquoYahweh is mightyrdquo⁶⁴) and the witnesses to the transac-tion include Dadi-larim son of Ahzi-Yāu (ldquoYahweh has takenrdquo⁶⁵) according to thesale contract documenting the transaction⁶⁶ Michael Heltzer was the first to ten-tatively connect the mention of individuals with Yahweh names in this documentwith the resettlement of the people of Samaria in the Khabur valley a centuryearlier but he also drew attention to other occasions that might have broughtdeportees from the southern Levant to the region⁶⁷ He was not yet aware of asignificantly earlier attestation for one Rapacirc-Yāu (ldquoYahweh has healedrdquo⁶⁸) as awitness in another legal document from Dur-Katlimmu a judicial settlementfrom 656 BCE⁶⁹ There is also another attestation for a Yahweh name at Dur-Kat-limmu in the fragment of an undated private letter⁷⁰

Draper ldquoTwo Libyan Namesrdquo 4ndash5 Daniel Schwemer ldquoHazaqi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 3I edHeather D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2000) 469 Gebhard J Selz ldquoAhzi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 1I ed KarenRadner (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1998) 88ndash9 Radner Die neuassyrischen Texte aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad no 37 4 mHa-za-qindashIaacute-a-u rev 14mAh-zindashIaacute-a-u There is also Adad-milki-ereš son of mMe-na-se-e (rev 13) Michael Heltzer ldquoSome Remarks Concerning the Neo-Babylonian Tablets from Šēḫ ḤamadrdquoSAAB 8 (1994) 116 Pierre Villard ldquoRapacirc-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2I ed HeatherD Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2002) 1032ndash33 Radner Die neuassyrischen Texte aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad no 110b rev 4 m[Ra]-pandashIa-u Karen Radner ldquoNeue neuassyrische Texte aus Dur-Katlimmu eine Schuumllertafel mit einersumerisch-akkadischen Koumlnigshymne und andere Keilschriftfunde aus den Jahren2003ndash2009rdquo in Dur-Katlimmu 2008 and Beyond ed Hartmut Kuumlhne (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz2010) 185 no 14 5rsquo [m]Ia-a-uacutendashra-qu-ut


It remains of course open whether the presence of persons with Yahwehnames in Dur-Katlimmu during the 7th century BCE has anything to do with theresettlements of Samarians in Guzana which lies about 160 km upstream fromDur-Katlimmu But it is not entirely unlikely that there is a connection giventhat we have encountered a significant number of Yahweh names among or in as-sociation with the resettled Samarians

5 Conclusions

Some of the resettled Samarians attested in the Assyrian archival records did verywell in their new surroundings the military men were members of the royal con-tingent arguably the most prestigious corps of the Assyrian armed forces and inGuzanawe met a Samarian with an extended family who owned a real estate port-folio in the city and another very well-connected Samarian individual who min-gled with the cityrsquos leading residents

We cannot assess the economic standing of the Samarian potters and car-penters who we encountered at Dur-Šarruken but their skill was clearly highlyvalued as King Sargon himself deemed them fit to contribute to the constructionof his new capital in the Halahhu region of Central Assyria In this case we wereable to observe that some of the innate social structures of the resettled popula-tion had not only been preserved but that the Assyrian authorities were expectedto respect them

Repeatedly we found Samarians bearing Yahweh names while in Guzanawe observed a curious connection with Libyan names that highlights how ono-mastics alone are not a reliable indicator of origin or ethnic or cultural identityThe kingdom of Israel was of course neither geographically nor politically isolat-ed and especially its capital Samaria is likely to have been a cosmopolitan citywith sizeable groups of foreign residents when the Assyrian Empire annexed it⁷sup1

It is a matter of debate how many people of a particular local populationwere made to move In the case of the kingdom of Israel this question has re-ceived much attention as it underpins any assessment of the relationship be-tween ancient Israelite and later Samaritan traditions⁷sup2 It is moot in my viewto try and quantify proportions However it is beyond any doubt that the Assyr-ian sources overwhelmingly associate resettlement with persons possessing spe-

For the connection with Egypt and the Libyan-controlled kingdoms in the Nile Delta see Rob-ert Morkotrsquos chapter in this volume Gary N Knoppers Jews and SamaritansThe Origins and History of Their Early Relations (NewYork Oxford University Press 2013) 18ndash44 for a critical assessment of debate

122 Karen Radner

cialised skills with educated elites in the broadest sense highly trained fightersscribes and scholars artisans and craftsmen of all kinds Therefore even if theresettlement programme affected only a relatively small percentage of the overallpopulation the absence of such specialists ndash which in the case of Samaria as wehave discussed included chariot crews potters and carpenters ndash would havemassively eroded and changed local culture and local identity


Robert G Morkot

The End of the Kingdom of Israel A Viewfrom the Nile Valley

1 Introduction

This paper is intended to present the current debates and disputes about the po-litical geography of late-Libyan and early-Kushite Egypt (Fig 1) that form onepart of the context of the reign of Hoshea and the end of the Kingdom of IsraelThe Egyptological perspective on the end of the Kingdom of Israel is not funda-mentally different now to how it was when Kenneth Kitchen published hisground-breaking study of the Libyan and Kushite periods in 1973sup1 Althoughthere has been considerable research on the late Libyan period over the pasttwo decades this has largely concentrated on discussion of detail in terms ofchronologies minutiae of dynastic affiliations and genealogies and specula-tions on power bases A radical proposal for re-ordering two Kushite rulershas repercussions for our understanding of the internal development of the dy-nasty but does not fundamentally alter the view of the period around 730ndash725BCE

2 The Kushite 25th Dynasty

The starting point for establishing the Nile Valley context for the end of the King-dom of Israel is the dating of the 25th Dynasty originating in Kush (modernnorthern Sudan) and the phases of their domination of Egypt The equationof the rulers named monumentally with those recorded by Manetho was estab-lished early in the development of Egyptology and apparently supported by laterdiscoveriessup2 These rulers were Shabaka (= Manethorsquos Sabacon) Shabataka (orShebitqo = Sebichos) and Taharka (or Taharqo = Tar(a)cos) Taharkarsquos successor

Kenneth A Kitchen The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100ndash650 BC) (Warminster Arisamp Phillips 1973 second edition with supplement 1986 third edition with new preface 1996) Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 148ndash73 Robert Morkot and Stephen Quirke ldquoInventingthe 25th Dynasty Turin Stela 1467 and the Construction of Historyrdquo in Begegnungen Antike Kul-turen im Niltal Festgabe fuumlr Erika Endesfelder Karl-Heinz Priese Walter Friedrich Reineke undSteffen Wenig von Schuumllern und Mitarbeiten ed Caris-Beatrice Arnst and Erika Endesfelder (Leip-zig Verlag Helmar Wodtke und Katharina Stegbauer 2001) 349ndash63

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-007

Fig 1 Map of the Nile valley indicating the most important places discussed in this chapter(prepared by the author)

126 Robert G Morkot

Tanutamun is recorded by Egyptian and Assyrian documents The ordering of thepredecessors of the dynasty Alara Kashta and Piye (Piankhy) was establishedthrough a range of inscriptional evidence

The anchor date for the Kushites and consequently the late Libyan phar-aohs is the accession of Taharka in 690 BCE The date is accepted as the earliestcertain date in Egyptian history all earlier dates being calculated from it orbased on the equation of the biblical Shishak with Shoshenq Isup3 or from Sothicdating The reign of Taharka is linked to that of Psamtik I by the text of a stelarecording the burial of a sacred Apis bull at Memphis which states that its instal-lation was in year 26 of the former ruler its death in year 20 of the latter and thatthe bullrsquos age was 21 years⁴ Year 26 is the highest attested of Taharka and as theexact dates for the 26th Dynasty are established (and can be linked to AssyrianBabylonian Persian dates and to Ptolemyrsquos Canon) there is a consensus that theaccession of Taharka fell in 690689 BCE⁵

The internal chronology of the Kushite dynasty thus becomes significant forthe Egyptian context of the end of the Kingdom of Israel The most important as-pect from the perspective of Western Asiatic studies and Assyriology is the datingof the Kushite incursions into Egypt and the conflict of Piye and Tefnakht andthe implications for the years 730ndash720 BCE

For the two immediate predecessors of Taharka there is inscriptional evi-dence from Egypt Although Shabatakarsquos highest regnal year so far documentedis year 3 most scholars have assumed that the reign was longer⁶ The length ofShabakarsquos reign is more certain the statue of Iti is dated to late in year 15⁷ Withonly one dated monument the length of Shabatakarsquos reign has always been cal-culated using either the unreliable epitomes of Manetho or the presumed acces-sion date of Shabaka Until further dated monuments can be confidently attrib-

Peter James and Peter G van der Veen eds Solomon and Shishak Current perspectives fromArchaeology Epigraphy History and Chronology (Oxford Archaeopress 2015) Stela 192 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 161ndash63 Cf Anthony J Spalinger ldquoThe Foreign Policy of Egypt Preceding the Assyrian Conquestrdquo CdE53 (1978) 22ndash47 the arguments for Taharqorsquos accession in 689 BCE do not make much differ-ence Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 154ndash61 esp 154 sect126 (i) although this is based on hiscalculation of the date for Shabakarsquos accession Leo Depuydt ldquoThe Date of Piyersquos Egyptian Cam-paign and the Chronology of the Twenty-fifth Dynastyrdquo JEA 79 (1993) 274 uses the lack ofmonuments as one factor in arguing a minimal reign Robert G Morkot ldquoKingship and Kinshipin the Empire of Kushrdquo in Studien zum Antiken Sudan Akten der 7 Internationalen Tagung fuumlrmeroitistische Forschungen ed Steffen Wenig (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 1999) 205ndash207 British Museum EA 24429 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 153ndash54 Morkot ldquoKingship andKinshiprdquo 207

The End of the Kingdom of Israel A View from the Nile Valley 127

uted to Shabataka all that can be said is that his reign was not less than threeyearsWith the accession of Taharqo in 690689 BC a strictly minimum chronol-ogy would set the beginning of Shabatakarsquos reign at 6932 BCE and that of Sha-baka (with a full 15 years) at 7087 BCE The reign of Piye (Piankhy) is universallyaccepted as immediately preceding that of Shabaka although its length is farless clear⁸

Leo Depuydt adopted a minimal chronology as the only secure foundationbut later noted the criticisms of other writers and felt obliged to clarify that theminimal date is not necessarily to be taken as an indication of the actual reignlength⁹ The conventional interpretation of the ordering of Kushite rulers theirreign lengths and absolute dates are thus established with high (Kenneth Kitch-en) low (Robert Morkot) and minimal (MorkotDepuydt) alternatives

High Low Minimal

Piye ndash ndash ndashShabaka ndash ndash ndashShabataka ndash ndash ndashTaharka ndash ndash ndash

On the assumption that the conflict between Piye and the Saite ruler Tefnakhtoccurred in years 1920 of Piyersquos reign the range is between 728727 BC and712 BC The issue then becomes the reign length of Piye which is certainly docu-mented to year 24 Scenes relating to the sed-festival suggest he may havereigned for over 30 years but a much disputed date on a bandage does not pro-vide unequivocal evidence for a date higher than year 30sup1⁰

Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 151ndash53 Morkot ldquoKinship and Kinshiprdquo Robert G MorkotThe Black Pharaohs Egyptrsquos Nubian Rulers (London Rubicon Press 2000) 167ndash74 Depuydt ldquoThe Date of Piyersquos Egyptian Campaignrdquo 270ndash71 offers 708 BCE or (using a differentaccession dating system) an absolute minimum start-date of 706 BCE for Shabaqo A minimalchronology had already previously been argued as 7087 BCE for Shabaqorsquos year 1 see PeterJ James I J Thorpe Nikos Kokkinos Robert G Morkot and John A Frankish ldquoCenturies of Dark-ness (Review Feature)rdquo Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1 (1991) 230 235 n 2 (based on theanalysis presented by Morkot at the 7 Internationalen Tagung fuumlr meroitistische Forschungen in1992 eventually published as Morkot ldquoKingship and Kinshiprdquo) BM EA 6640 Donald B Redford ldquoSais and the Kushite Invasions of the Eighth Century BCrdquoJournal of the American Research Center in Egypt 22 (1985) 5ndash 15 questioning year 40 KitchenThird Intermediate Period 152 reading year 30+ Morkot Black Pharaohs 314 n 9

128 Robert G Morkot

3 Recent Debates the Inscription of Sargon IIof Assyria at Tang-i Var in Iran

The most significant recent debates were generated by Grant Framersquos publicationof the inscription of Sargon II of Assyria (721ndash705 BCE) at Tang-i Var near San-andaj in Kurdistan province of Iransup1sup1 Although a record of the campaign againstKaralla the annalistic preamble to the inscription contains another version ofthe well-known episode of Yamani of Ashdodrsquos flight from the advancing Assyr-ian armysup1sup2 The Tang-i Var inscription is the only version of the episode that re-cords the name of the ruler of Meluhha (= Kush) which can only be understoodas that of Shabataka (Shebitqo)

The Tang-i Var inscription has generated a voluminous Egyptological litera-ture the bulk of which has ignored the purpose of the Assyrian text Frame ob-serves that the Tang-i Var text almost certainly belongs to 706 BC relating to thecampaign to Karalla in that year and must have been composed (and carved)before Sargonrsquos death in 705 BCE Frame also comments that the Display Inscrip-tion and the inscription from Room XIV of Sargonrsquos palace in his new capital cityDur-Šarruken (Khorsabad) belong to the same year as they refer to the comple-tion of the construction of that citysup1sup3

The very brief annalistic preamble is not the purpose of the text although ithas drawn the lengthiest commentary from Egyptologists who put forward nu-merous new chronologies of the 25th Kushite Dynastysup1⁴ most claiming that Sar-

Grant Frame ldquoThe Inscription of Sargon II at Tang-i Varrdquo Or 68 (1999) 31ndash57 Morkot Black Pharaohs 200ndash204 with references to the literature Frame ldquoInscription of Sargon IIrdquo 54 Cf David A Aston ldquoTakeloth II a King of the HerakleopolitanTheban Twenty-third DynastyRevisited The Chronology of Dynasties 22 and 23rdquo in The Libyan Period in Egypt ed Gerard P FBroekman Robert J Demareacutee and Olaf E Kaper (Leuven Peeters 2009) 1ndash28 Gerard P FBroekman ldquoThe Egyptian Chronology from the Start of the Twenty-second until the End of theTwenty-fifth Dynasty Facts Suppositions and Argumentsrdquo Journal of Egyptian History 4(2011) 40ndash80 Aidan Dodson Afterglow of Empire Egypt from the Fall of the New Kingdom tothe Saite Renaissance (Cairo and New York American University in Cairo Press 2012)195ndash201 Karl Jansen-Winkeln ldquoThe Chronology of the Third Intermediate Period Dyns22ndash24rdquo in Ancient Egyptian Chronology ed Erik Hornung Rolf Krauss and David AWarburton(Leiden Brill 2006) 234ndash64 Danrsquoel Kahn ldquoThe Inscription of Sargon II at Tang-i Var and theChronology of Dynasty 25rdquo Or 70 (2001) 1ndash 18 id ldquoDivided Kingdom Co-Regency or Sole Rulein the Kingdom(s) of Egypt-and-Kushrdquo AeL 16 (2006) 277ndash91 id ldquoWas There a Co-Regency inthe 25th Dynastyrdquo Mitteilungen der Sudanarchaumlologischen Gesellschaft 17 (2006) 9ndash 17 RolfKrauss ldquoAn Egyptian Chronology for Dynasties XIII to XXVrdquo in The Synchronisation of Civilisa-tions in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium BC vol III Proceedings of the


gonrsquos inscription can be interpreted as indicating that Shabataka was rulingEgypt by the date of the inscription 706 BCE This is a misinterpretation Shaba-taka (if he was really intended to be named at all) is specified as ruler of Meluh-ha (= Kush) not of Egypt When the original Egyptological responses made theincorrect assumption that the reference to Shabataka indicated he was ruling inEgypt by 706 BC and perhaps at the time of Yamanirsquos flight this resulted in thefollowing (very similar) chronologiessup1⁵

Kahn

Aston

Jansen-Winkeln

Krauss

Broekman

Dodson

Shabaka ndash

ndash

ndash

ndash

ndash(minimum)

ndash

Shabataka ndash

ndash

ndash

ndash

ndash(minimum)

ndash

Kitchen dismisses such dates as ldquoquite simply ludicrousrdquo giving two reasonsfirst his belief that Shabaka removed all other kings from Egypt (making inex-plicable the existence of Shilkanni clearly a Delta ruler in 716 BC) and secondthat extending the reign of Shabataka ldquoseems entirely unrealistic given the al-most non-existent state of date-lines so far attested from his reignrdquosup1⁶ The firstpoint is not acceptable as there must have been other kings (such as Geme-nef-khonsu-bak) and weru-chiefs ruling in parts of the Delta throughout theKushite hegemony (see further below)sup1⁷ There is however no evidence to justify

SCIEM 2000 2nd EuroConference ed Manfred Bietak and Ernst Czerny (Vienna Austrian Acad-emy of Sciences Press 2007) 173ndash89 The information in the following table derives from Kahn ldquoInscription of Sargon IIrdquo AstonldquoTakeloth IIrdquo 5ndash6 20 Jansen-Winkeln ldquoChronology of the Third Intermediate Periodrdquo 258ndash61Krauss ldquoAn Egyptian Chronologyrdquo 187 Broekman ldquoThe Egyptian Chronologyrdquo 57 and DodsonAfterglow of Empire 201 Kenneth A Kitchen ldquoThe Third Intermediate Period in Egypt An Overview of Fact amp Fic-tionrdquo in The Libyan Period in Egypt ed Gerard P F Broekman Robert J Demareacutee and OlafE Kaper (Leuven Peeters 2009) 161ndash202 esp 163 Note that not all the ldquokingsrdquo (šarru) listed by Esarhaddon were necessarily local ldquomayorsrdquo inEgyptian terms Some cases are clear eg Mantimeanhe šarru of Ni is the well-known Mon-tjuemhat Mayor of Thebes Yet at least some of these were actual monarchs as Kitchen ThirdIntermediate Period 395ndash97 accepts with respect to Niku I (672ndash664 BC) and Putubishti ofTanis who he identifies as Sehetepib(en)re Pedubast II From the finds at Tanis Kitchen ac-knowledges the possibility of a line of ldquokingletsrdquo including Gemenef-khonsu-bak Robert GMorkot and Peter J James ldquoPeftjauawybast King of Nen-nesut Genealogy Art History and

130 Robert G Morkot

stretching the reign of Shabataka to some 16 years or more from the three attest-ed even if a reign longer than the documented three years seems more likely

The most important point (somewhat obscured in Kitchenrsquos argument) isthat the new high dates derived from the Tang-i Var inscription run completelycounter to the well-raked over evidence that the Kushites were not in direct con-trol of Lower Egypt by 7132 BCE when Yamani of Ashdod made appeal to ldquoPirlsquouof Muṣrirdquo (that is Pharaoh of Egypt) for help This Pirlsquou was certainly not a Kush-ite ruler but is most probably identical with Šilkanni who sent a gift of horsesfrom the Nile Delta region to Sargon II in 716 BCE according to the latterrsquos in-scriptions The high dates advocated for Shabaka indicate the end of Piyersquosreign in 7221 BCE ndash thereby pushing his accession backwards from Kitchenrsquos747 BCE to around 754 BCEsup1⁸

If Shabaka had already made Memphis his base in Egypt before 716 BCEhow could a local Delta dynast such as Šilkanni have dared to have independ-ently sent a gift of horses to Sargon II It seems a most unlikely scenario IfShabaka were already established at Memphis surely he himself would havesent the horses especially as Šilkanni would have almost certainly obtainedthese from Kush in the first placesup1⁹ The same problem recurs in 7132 BCEwhen Yamani of Ashdod sent gifts not to the king of Kush but to the pharaohof Egypt (ldquoPirlsquou of Muṣrirdquo arguably still Šilkanni) attempting to obtain helpagainst the Assyrians Sargon records that the Pirlsquou was powerless to help andthat after his expulsion from Ashdod Yamani fled through Egypt to Meluhhawhere he received sanctuary Again if Shabaka were based at Memphis whywould the decision not have been made there to give him asylum Or if Shabakawas the Pirlsquou as some have claimed ndash was the flight to Meluhha some kind ofsubterfuge in which Shabaqo was pretending to have no authority over the re-mote land of Meluhha Again a most unlikely scenario

After the conflict with Tefnakht Piye (who did not make his capital at Mem-phis but retained control of Upper Egypt) Šilkannithe Pirlsquou would have re-mained at least the nominal vassal of the Kushite kings but with enough inde-pendence to have diplomatic relations with the Assyrians who were active onEgyptrsquos very border Kush and Meluhha seem very removed from all these pro-

the Chronology of Late-Libyan Egyptrdquo Antiguo Oriente 7 (2009) 13ndash55 argue that the main 22nd

Dynasty line (in the person of Shoshenq V) continued at Tanis until the reign of Shabaqo Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 589 Table 4 For Kushite horses see Robert G Morkot ldquoThe Origin of the Kushite State A Response to thePaper of Laacuteszloacute Toumlroumlkrdquo in Actes de la VIIIe Confeacuterence Internationale des Eacutetudes Nubiennesvol 1 Communications principales (Villeneuve drsquoAscq Universiteacute Charles de Gaulle ndash Lille 31995) 237ndash38 and Lisa Heidorn ldquoThe Horses of Kushrdquo JNES 56 (1997) 105ndash14


ceedings indeed it is specifically described by Sargon as a remote countrywhose kings had not been in touch with Assyria before the extradition of Yama-ni Unless we assume that this is mere hyperbole and that all Assyrian intelli-gence about Egypt at this period was virtually useless we have to concludethat Shabakarsquos conquest of the north did not take place before c 711 BCE Thisrenders the high dates derived from Tang-i Var in which Shabakarsquos secondyear fell c 720 BCE totally unworkable Shabaka after all is first documentedin Egypt in his second regnal year and his defeat of the Saite ruler Bakanranefby which he gained control of the whole of the Delta is generally attributed tothat same yearsup2⁰ Besides as detailed above any attempt to lengthen the reign ofShabataka on the evidence of the Tang-i Var inscription is misinterpreting thesource As Kitchen rightly notes it has been lsquoglibly and superficially assumedrsquothat Shabataka was reigning as pharaoh in Egypt in 706 BCEsup2sup1 This misinterpre-tation of the evidence is having wider repercussions by being uncritically quot-ed Jeffrey Blakely and James Hardin citing Grant Frame Donald Redford andDanrsquoel Kahn state that Yamani was ldquoeventually returned to Assyria hellip by Phar-aoh Shebitkurdquosup2sup2

4 Recent Debates Re-Ordering the KushiteKings

The debate has now gone even further in radically re-assessing the internal suc-cession and chronology of the 25th Dynasty Michael Baacutenyai proposed the rever-sal of the generally accepted order of the Kushite kings Shabaka and Shabatakaarguing that the generally accepted readings of Manethorsquos Sabacon as Shabakaand Manethorsquos Sebichos as Shabataka were wrongsup2sup3 This has been followed by anumber of writers indeed in the most recent defence of this interpretationClaus Jurman notes that the order has now entered into one general history of

Morkot Black Pharaohs 205ndash208 Kitchen ldquoThird Intermediate Periodrdquo 163 sectsect4 6 Jeffrey A Blakely and James W Hardin ldquoSouthwestern Judah in the Late Eighth CenturyBCErdquo BASOR 326 (2002) 11ndash64 Michael Baacutenyai ldquoEin Vorschlag zur Chronologie der 25 Dynastie in Aumlgyptenrdquo Journal ofEgyptian History 6 (2013) 46ndash129 Michael Baacutenyai with commentaries by Anke I Bloumlbaum Ger-ard Broekman Karl Jansen-Winkeln Claus Jurman Danrsquoel Kahn Angelika Lohwasser and HansNeumann ldquoDie Reihenfolge der kuschitischen Koumlnigerdquo Journal of Egyptian History 8 (2015)115ndash80

132 Robert G Morkot

Egypt as accepted truthsup2⁴ Although this change in order post-dates the end ofthe kingdom of Israel the repercussions impact on interpretation of the earlierphases of the dynasty

Baacutenyairsquos chronology adopts the minimalist chronology advocated by De-puydt but reverses the order of Shabaka and Shabataka and also builds in alarge co-regency between Shabaka and Taharka that is not justified by the evi-dence but necessitated to accommodate the known reign-length of Shabaka

Baacutenyai

Piye ndash BCEShabataka ndash BCEShabaka ndash BCETaharka ndash BCE

Jurman supporting the reordering of the rulers also follows a lower absolutechronology thus maintaining the more conventional date for Piyersquos accessionand hence the conflict with Tefnakht On both Jurmanrsquos and Baacutenyairsquos chronol-ogies the conflict between Piye and Tefnakht would have occurred around 715BCE

Freacutedeacuteric Payraudeau accepts the reversal of rulers and a thirty year longreign for Piyesup2⁵ He therefore dates Piyersquos reign 744ndash714 BCE with the conflictwith Tefnakht in 723 BCE followed by an interruption to Kushite control ofUpper Egypt by the obscure king Iny around 720 BCE In this scheme Piyersquos suc-cessor Shabataka reigned 714ndash705 BCE establishing himself in Egypt and de-feating the Saite ruler Bakenranef in 712 BCE

There are numerous issues of interpretation of the inscriptional evidencethat have not yet been addressed by the proposers of this scheme Our under-standing of the royal genealogies and of the method of succession requires analmost complete revisionsup2⁶

Claus Jurman ldquoThe Order of the Kushite Kings According to Sources from the Eastern Desertand Thebes Or Shabataka was here firstrdquo Journal of Egyptian History 10 (2017) 124ndash51 Freacutedeacuteric Payraudeau ldquoLes obscures deacutebuts de la domination soudanaise en Egypte (deux-iegraveme moitieacute du VIIIe s av J-C)rdquo in Comptes rendus des seacuteances de lrsquoAcadeacutemie des Inscriptionset Belles-Lettres 2014 1597ndash611 also id ldquoRetour sur la Succession ShabaqondashShabataqordquo NeHetRevue numeacuterique drsquoEacutegyptologie 1 (2014) 115ndash27 (online httpsfe-egyptologiewebsiteindexphppublicationsla-revue-nehet last accessed 30 January 2018) Morkot ldquo Kingship and Kinshiprdquo


5 Egyptian Involvement in Southwest Asiain the 8th and Early 7th Centuries BCE

The recorded interactions of Egypt with Israel Judah and Assyria in the periodpreceding the reign of Sennacherib (704ndash681 BCE) are few but have generatedconsiderable literature According to the Hebrew Bible the first notable Egyptianactivity was the sack of Jerusalem by ldquoShishakrdquo in the reign of Rehoboam gen-erally dated to 925 BCE Since Franccedilois Champollion Shishakrsquos campaign hasbeen connected with the relief of Shoshenq I on the ldquoBubastite Portalrdquo of thetemple of Karnak despite the problems of linking the name lists there withthe narrative of the Bible This is not the place to discuss the campaign orwhether it represents an attempt by the new power in Egypt to re-assert someinfluence in southwestern Asiasup2⁷

The dynasty that descended from Shoshenq I (following Manetho the 22nd

Dynasty) was based in the eastern Delta at Per-Bast (Bubastis) and Tanis theytherefore controlled the route across north Sinai to Gaza The dynasty ruled allof Egypt until the death of Osorkon II when problems began notably in thesouthern city of Thebes and new rival dynasties (or lines of the same family)competed for control There is no consensus on the interpretation of the evidencefor late-Libyan Egypt into which the Kushites extended their power

The next Egyptian involvement was relatively small-scale when 1000 sol-diers were sent to join the coalition led by Hadad-idri of Damascus againstthe army of Shalmaneser III of Assyria (858ndash824 BCE) at the battle of Qarqarin 853 BCE Kitchen attributes this involvement to Osorkon II based on his recon-struction of the chronology and is generally followedsup2⁸

Shalmaneser III continued to bring his armies to the Levant and in 841 BCEachieved suzerainty over the rulers recorded on the ldquoBlack Obeliskrdquo Here theusurper king of Israel Jehu is shown paying homage and the tribute of theland of Muṣri is recorded Kitchensup2⁹ dates this event to the reign of Takeloth IIregarding the king as the direct successor of Osorkon II in Tanis others considerTakeloth II a Theban or Herakleopolitan rulersup3⁰

A major problem for defining the political and economic connections be-tween Egypt and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the Phoenician cities

For discussion and references see Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 72ndash75 and James andvan der Veen Solomon and Shishak Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 325 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 327 Aston ldquoTakeloth IIrdquo

134 Robert G Morkot

is the lack of any significant amount of detailed economic evidencesup3sup1 The re-cords of the tribute presented by the Levantine cities and states to Assyriahints at trade with Egypt and (perhaps indirectly) Kush ebony ivory elephanthides and exotic animals are all mentioned Some indication of the sorts ofother commodities that were exported is given in the ldquoReport of Wenamunrdquo ofthe very late 20th Dynasty whether or not the text is an actual report or a fictionalaccountsup3sup2 Whilst in Byblos to acquire timber Wenamun received 500 rolls ofpapyrus from Nesubanebdjed and Tentamun the rulers based in Tanis alongwith vessels of gold and silver and garments of ldquoroyal linenrdquo (byssos) andldquofine linenrdquo High quality linen was an Egyptian product and the best qualitya royal monopoly and there is evidence that it was dyed in cities such as Tyrebefore being made into garments which were then sent to Assyria Papyrus pro-duction seems to have been entirely Egyptian and the increase in the use of Ara-maic probably saw an increase in its usage across Western Asia and hence in itsexport Papyrus too varied in quality and that made in the eastern Delta aroundTanis was one of the best

Egypt under Libyan rule continued to have a close relationship with Byblosattested by the statue fragments of Shoshenq I Osorkon I and Osorkon II foundthere Trade presumably continued with other Phoenician cities such as SidonTyre and Ashdod although the direct evidence comes from the Kushite periodTaharka names Asiatic commodities such as timber and metal that were usedin the building of the temple of Kawa during the first decade of his reignsup3sup3and a treaty with Esarhaddon specifically forbids Barsquoalu of Tyre from engagingin trade with Egyptsup3⁴ A letter of Sennacherib as Crown Prince to Sargon IIlists contributions received by the royal palace including elephant hides rollsof papyrus and garments made of byssossup3⁵ all Egyptian or Kushite products

Moshe Elat ldquoThe Economic Relations of the Neo-Assyrian Empire with Egyptrdquo JAOS 98(1978) 20ndash34 Robert G Morkot ldquoNorth-East Africa and Trade at the Crossroads of the Nile Val-ley the Mediterranean and the Red Seardquo in Dynamics of Production in the Ancient Near1300ndash500 BC ed Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia (Oxford and Philadelphia Oxbow 2016) 257ndash74 Recent editions and discussions include Robert K Ritner The Libyan Anarchy Inscriptionsfrom Egyptrsquos Third Intermediate Period (Atlanta Society for Biblical Literature 2009) 87ndash99(no 18) and Jean Winand ldquoThe Report of Wenamun A Journey in Ancient Egyptian Literaturerdquoin Ramesside Studies in Honour of K A Kitchen ed Mark Collier and Steven Snape (BoltonRutherford Press 2009) 541ndash59 Morkot Black Pharaohs 252ndash56 Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (Helsinki Hel-sinki University Press 1988) no 5 Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part I Letters from Assyria and the West (Hel-sinki Helsinki University Press 1987) no 34


Egyptian alabaster (calcite) vessels were another common export and havebeen excavated at Samariasup3⁶ and in the cemetery at Almuntildeecar in Spainsup3⁷Other vessels had hieroglyphic texts and cartouches added presumably to in-crease their valuesup3⁸ The vessels presumably made their way from Tanis to oneof the Levantine cities and thence to Spain Scarabs carrying the names of thelate-Libyan kings Pedubast Pimay and Osorkon III have been found at CarthageSpain and in Italysup3⁹ The ldquoBocchoris vasesrdquo from Tarquinia (an original Egyptianproduct) and Lilybaeum (a non-Egyptian copy) along with other faience givesome indication of other types of manufactures exported⁴⁰

In the later years of the Libyan period there may have been a number of cen-tres which were particularly involved in international trade Tanis both a royalresidence city and situated on the sea must have been one of these with thenames of successive 22nd Dynasty rulers namely Shoshenq I Osorkon I Osor-kon II Takeloth II and Shoshenq III occurring on items found abroad Memphistoo remained important as a major royal residence city and trading centre Inthe western Delta Sais may well have established early contacts with the Phoe-nicians The Phoenician expansion along the North African coast would have re-quired staging posts and doubtless contacts would have been made with majortowns nearby Certainly the ldquoBocchoris vasesrdquo and scarabs suggest that Sais hadcontacts with the Phoenician traders

Following Shalmaneser III (858ndash824 BCE) the next Assyrian ruler to be ac-tive in the west was Tiglath-pileser III (745ndash727 BCE) This is one of the few in-stances of specific contact between Egypt and Israel to be documented The bib-lical episode of Hoshearsquos appeal to ldquoSo king of Egyptrdquo c 725 BCE has been veryextensively discussed and has a well-known and voluminous literature⁴sup1 Earlier

George A Reisner Clarence S Fisher and David G Lyon Harvard Excavations at Samaria1908ndash 1910 vol II (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1924) pl 56 (g)with name of Osor-kon II Josep Padroacute i Parcerisa Egyptian-Type Documents from the Mediterranean Littoral of the Iber-ian Peninsula Before the Roman Conquest vol III Study of the Material (Leiden E J Brill 1985)pl LXXVII (Takeloth II) pl CXXVII1 (Osorkon II) Parcerisa Egyptian-Type Documents pl CIX (Shoshenq III) pl CXIV1 (Osorkon II copiedfrom the original vessel) Jean Vercoutter Les objets eacutegyptiens et eacutegyptisants du mobilier funeacuteraire carthaginois (ParisLibrairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner 1945) Josep Padroacute i Parcerisa Egyptian-Type Documentsfrom the Mediterranean Littoral of the Iberian Peninsula Before the Roman Conquest vol IIStudy of the Material (Leiden Brill 1983) Glenn Markoe Phoenicians (Berkeley University of California Press 2000) 158 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 372ndash75 Morkot Black Pharaohs 126ndash27 310 n 20 JohnDay ldquoThe Problem of lsquoSo King of Egyptrsquo in 2 Kings xvii 4rdquo VT 42 (1992) 289ndash301

136 Robert G Morkot

Egyptologists such as Flinders Petrie identified ldquoSordquo with Shabaka arguing thathe acted as a Viceroy or regent in Egypt for either Kashta or Piye of Kush Morerecently reading the name as a place rather than person was proposed by Don-ald Redford who argued that ldquoSordquo was a reference to Sau (Sais) and thus to Tef-nakht⁴sup2 Most writers prefer to understand ldquoSordquo as an abbreviation for Osorkonand usually number him lsquoIVrsquo arguing that the date of the events is far too late foran identification with Osorkon III The rulerrsquos identification with a specific docu-mented pharaoh is very largely dependent on the broader interpretations of thepolitical geography and chronology of the period hence there is a lack of con-sensus Furthermore in this volume Christoph Levin raises doubts about thevalidity of this episode as recorded in the Book of Kings regarding the nameas an interpolation of the late Persian or Hellenistic period and Timo Tekoniemiexpands on the complexities of the traditions preserved in other sources Clearlywithout any corroborating Egyptian or Assyrian sources the validity of the Bookof Kings as a source and hence the reality of the appeal to ldquoSordquo is questionable

Another considerable literature relates to the identification of Sargon IIrsquos op-ponent at the battle of Raphia in 720 BCE ldquoSibrsquoerdquo as the name in the Assyrianinscription was originally read was once identified with the biblical ldquoSo king ofEgyptrdquo Since the text clearly calls him ldquoarmy leaderrdquo rather than ldquokingrdquo and thename has been re-read as Rersquoe the Egyptian equivalent would be Raia The ques-tion then becomes which ruler of Egypt sent an army against the Assyrians Thelogical answer would be the leading ruler of Egypt at the time which brings usback to the array of possible interpretations derived from chronological assump-tions

In 716 BCE tribute was sent from Egypt to Sargon II by a king Šilkanni ac-knowledged to be an ldquoOsorkonrdquo⁴sup3 It can only be assumed that despite Piyersquos su-zerainty Osorkon continued to be recognised as the most important of the Deltarulers and hence in international terms the king of Egypt

The other significant international event with repercussions in the Nile val-ley is the rebellion and flight of Yamani of Ashdod In 712 BCE Sargon II con-quered Ashdod expelling the ldquousurperrdquo Yamani who fled as far as he could toescape the clutches of the Assyrians A key passage in Sargonrsquos records as trans-lated by A Leo Oppenheim states that Yamani ldquofled into the territory of Muṣri ndashwhich belongs (now) to Ethiopia (Meluhha) ndash and his (hiding) place could not

Redford ldquoSais and the Kushite Invasionsrdquo and Donald B Redford Egypt Canaan and Israelin Ancient Times (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1992) Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 143 376 n 756 Morkot Black Pharaohs 128 193 with ref-erences


be detectedrdquo⁴⁴ Kenneth Kitchen understood this as meaning that Shabaka musthave conquered Egypt ldquoby 712 BC at the very latestrdquo⁴⁵ advocating 716 BCE forShabakarsquos accession⁴⁶

First it was pointed out long ago by Anthony Spalinger that the alleged postquem of 712 BCE for the invasion of Shabaka is based on a mistranslation by Op-penheim of the text⁴⁷ Rather than saying that Yamani fled to Muṣri which ldquobe-longsrdquo to Meluhha the correct reading is that he fled to Meluhha which borderson Egypt or ldquoto the border of Egypt which is at the territory of Meluhhardquo⁴⁸ Thecorrected translation is now generally accepted including by Kitchen himself⁴⁹Hence the Pirlsquou of Muṣri to whom Yamani appealed for aid in 7132 BCE was nota Kushite overlord of Egypt but the leading Delta dynast possibly still ŠilkanniIt follows that far from the Assyrian evidence supporting Kitchenrsquos relatively highchronology it would follow that 7132 BCE is a firm terminus post quem for theconquest by Shabaka (or Shabataka if following Baacutenyairsquos revised order) Thefirst year of Shabaka cannot have been as high as 716 BCE and hence cannotbe used to calculate (by subtracting the known 1415 years of his reign inEgypt) the accession of Shabataka to 702 BCE There is no longer any concreteobjection to a later date for the conquest of Egypt by Shabaka (or Shabataka)and hence a minimal dating for the 25th Dynasty (see above) with the latterrsquosreign beginning even as late as 7087 BCE

The debates arising from the Tang-i Var inscription unnecessarily raised thedates for the Kushite invasion of Egypt by Shabaka and greatly extended thereign of Shabataka in direct conflict with the Assyrian evidence The proposedreversal of ordering of kings has carried some of the raised dating and extendedreigns across into the new scheme Only Claus Jurman has proposed a workablerevision that adheres to the evidence But whether it is ldquotruerdquo remains to be sub-stantiated ndash numerous questions remain unanswered So despite the consider-able discourse the actualiteacute of the Nile valley context to the end of the Kingdomof Israel remains essentially that argued broadly by Kitchen and other writers

A Leo Oppenheim ldquoBabylonian and Assyrian Historical Textsrdquo in Ancient Near EasternTexts Relating to the Old Testament ed James B Pritchard (Princeton NJ Princeton UniversityPress 1969 3rd edition) 285 (11ndash 15) 286 (90ndash 112) Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 144 (his emphasis) James et al ldquoCenturies of Darkness (Review Feature)rdquo 230 235 n 2 Spalinger ldquoThe Year 712 BCrdquo 97 n 17 Alan R Millard as cited in Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 583 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 583 xl Redford ldquoSais and the Kushite Invasionsrdquo 7 n 11Kahn ldquoDivided Kingdomrdquo 279

138 Robert G Morkot

Kushite control of the Nile Valley into Upper Egypt Libyan kingdoms in Middleand Lower Egypt with numerous Libyan fiefdoms under lesser rulers

6 The Political Geography of Late Libyan Egypt

Lengthily discussed the principal source for the political geography of Egypt atthe time of the Kushite incursion is the long narrative inscription of Piye (Piank-hy) of Kush known variously as the ldquoVictory Stelardquo or ldquoTriumphal Stelardquo⁵⁰ Spe-cifically concerned with the defeat of the Saite ruler Tefnakht the text details thenumerous rulers of Egypt revealing that there were four ldquouraeus-wearersrdquo ndashkings in the fullest pharaonic sense along with the Libyan Great Chiefs andChiefs of the Ma (Meshwesh) and the ruler of Sais

The inscription is dated to New Yearrsquos Day of year 21 of the reign of Piye andmost of those who have discussed the events have assumed that they occurred inthe two years immediately preceding beginning in year 19⁵sup1 The present writerrsquossuggestion that the campaign should be attributed to year 4 or year 12 has notbeen accepted⁵sup2 Giving an absolute date for the campaign is more difficult⁵sup3Kitchen and Aston and Taylor place the campaign in 728 BCE⁵⁴ The recent dis-cussions of the chronology of the 25th Dynasty have not specifically addressedthe issue but generally imply a rather higher date if a long reign for Piye is ac-cepted Even adopting a minimal chronology for the 25th Dynasty the evidenceindicates that the Kushites controlled southern Egypt and had vassal rulers inMiddle Egypt during the decade 730ndash720 BCE

From the text of the Victory Stela we can state that the southernmost part ofEgypt centred on Thebes was under Kushite control and that there was somesort of military presence that Piye ndash in Kush at the time of Tefnakhtrsquos south-ward campaign ndash could send against the Saite army⁵⁵ Another inscription ofPiye the ldquoSandstone Stelardquo is only partially preserved but can be dated earlyin his reign probably around year 3⁵⁶ Altogether the evidence indicates that

Cairo JE 48862 and 47086ndash47089 Nicholas Grimal Eacutetudes sur la propagande royale Eacutegypti-enne vol I La stegravele triomphale de Pi(ankh)y au Museacutee du Caire JE 48862 et 47086ndash47089(Cairo Institut franccedilais drsquoArcheacuteologie Orientale du Caire 1981) Morkot Black Pharaohs 167ndash68 Morkot Black Pharaohs 172ndash74 184 200 Morkot and James ldquoPeftjauawybastrdquo 15 Morkot and James ldquoPeftjauawybastrdquo 17ndash 18 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 234 Aston and Taylor ldquoThe Family of Takeloth IIIrdquo Morkot Black Pharaohs 182ndash85 Morkot ldquoThe Origin of the Kushite Staterdquo id Black Pharaohs 169ndash74


Piye was recognised as ruler in Thebes and Upper Egypt His immediate prede-cessor is generally believed to have been Kashta and although the evidence forhis reign and actions is slight most writers have assumed that he began theprocess of Kushite expansion into Upper Egypt⁵⁷ The most notable indicatorof his ambition is the installation of his daughter Amenirdis as heiress to thepriestly office of Godrsquos Wife of Amun at Thebes The incumbent was the Libyanprincess Shepenwepet daughter of Osorkon III Although Kitchen argued thather brother Piye placed Amenirdis in this role one must stress that all otherGodrsquos Wives were installed by their fathers

The northern limit of Kushite rule in Upper Egypt is not specified in any textbut somewhere between Abydos and Asyut seems likely The early Libyan HighPriest of Amun Iuwelot (son of Osorkon I) stated that his northern militaryboundary lay at the nome of Asyut⁵⁸ Tjeny (Girga) slightly north of Abydoswas the base of Vizier in the later 25th Dynasty⁵⁹ and the Ptolemaic administra-tive centre for the Thebaid Ptolemais Hermiou was in the same region

The ldquoSandstone Stelardquo of Piye is important in carrying a speech of the godAmun of Thebes (Waset) who addresses the Kushite king as ldquoRuler of Egypt(Kemet)rdquo and gives him the power to establish rulers or not⁶⁰

ldquoHe to whom I say lsquoYou are a wer-Chiefrsquo he shall be a wer-ChiefHe to whom I say lsquoYou are not a Chiefrsquo he shall not be a wer-ChiefHe to whom I say lsquoMake an appearance [ie as nesut-king]rsquo he shall make an appearanceHe to whom I say lsquoDo not make an appearance [as nesut-king]rsquo he shall not make an ap-pearancerdquo

The distinction between the Chiefs (in Egyptian werweru) and those who ldquomakeappearancerdquo as full kings is very clear and reflected in the text of the ldquoVictoryStelardquo We can see in these texts the Kushite confirmation of rulers in their po-sitions and perhaps deposition of opponents⁶sup1 The later Assyrian list of Egyp-

Morkot Black Pharaohs 157ndash66 ldquoStegravele de lrsquoapanagerdquo Cairo JE 31882 Karl Jansen-Winkeln Inschriften der Spaumltzeit Teil II Die22ndash24 Dynastie (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2007) 77ndash80 (no 168) Ritner The Libyan Anarchy271ndash78 (no 69) Morkot Black Pharaohs 275 Anthony Leahy ldquoNespamedu lsquoKingrsquo of Thinisrdquo Goumlttinger Mis-zellen 35 (1979) 31ndash39 Morkot Black Pharaohs 179 Ritner The Libyan Anarchy 461ndash64 (no 143) Morkot ldquoThe Origin of the Kushite Staterdquo 231ndash32 id Black Pharaohs 179ndash80

140 Robert G Morkot

tian rulers dating from 671 BCE⁶sup2 or more conventionally 6676 BCE indicates asimilar process

North of the Kushite-controlled Thebaid was the vassal-kingdom of Khmunu(Hermopolis) under the rule of Nimlot This appears to be a new kingdom andone possibly established by the Kushites As Tefnakht and the Delta rulers ad-vanced south Nimlot defected but was soon besieged by Piyersquos army⁶sup3 Nimlotrsquosidentity and association with other dynasties has been the subject of discussionbut is not directly relevant to the issues here It is possible that he was still rulerat the time of the Assyrian list which records a ldquoLamintu of Himunurdquo althoughmost Egyptologists assume that this was a like-named grandson⁶⁴

North of Khmunu lay another vassal kingdom of Piyersquos centred on Nen-nesut(Herakleopolis) in a controlling position at the mouth of the Fayum and in avery fertile part of Egypt Its precise limits are not stated but its southern borderwas presumably the northern border of Nimlotrsquos kingdom Nen-nesut controlledaccess to Memphis and the Delta from the south It also included the fortressesat Teudjoi (el-Hiba) and Per-Sekhem-kheper-re that had been the seats of formi-dable royal representatives throughout the Libyan period The kingdom appearsto have been a new creation although a number of Egyptologists notably DavidAston have argued that it was the centre of the ldquo23rd Dynastyrdquo Piyersquos vassal rulerwas Peftjauawybast who was related by marriage to the family of Takeloth IIIand Rudamun (both sons of Osorkon III) It has been generally assumed thathe was a member of one of the Libyan royal families although the suggestionof Morkot and James⁶⁵ that he could be identified with the like-named HighPriest of Ptah and descendant of Osorkon II has not been widely acceptedThe northern limit of Peftjauawybastrsquos kingdom lay somewhere in the regionof Medum Lisht and Tep-ihu

Memphis one of the largest and most significant cities had been broughtunder his own rule by Tefnakht The ldquoVictory Stelardquo narrates Tefnakhtrsquos expand-ing power from his original power base in Sau (Sais) across the western Deltaand southwards to Memphis

The central and eastern Delta was controlled by Libyan chiefs of differingranks⁶⁶ There were also two full kings Osorkon who controlled Per-Bast (Bu-

Herbert Verreth ldquoThe Egyptian Eastern Border Region in Assyrian Sourcesrdquo JAOS 119 (1999)234ndash47 Morkot Black Pharaohs 182ndash83 187ndash88 Eg Anthony Leahy ldquoRoyal Iconography and Dynastic Change 750ndash725 BC the Blue andCap Crownsrdquo JEA 78 (1992) 223ndash40 Morkot and James ldquoPeftjauawybastrdquo Morkot Black Pharaohs 191ndash95


bastis) and Iuput of Tent-remu The identification of Iuputrsquos centre of power isuncertain Kitchen suggested Tell Muqdam⁶⁷ The references to Osorkon seemto indicate that he had some considerable prestige amongst the rulers (or atleast with Piye) and his seat of Per-Bast indicates he was in the line of rulersdescended from Shoshenq I (conventionally termed ldquo22nd Dynastyrdquo) The ldquoVictoryStelardquo names no separate ruler in Tanis although the ldquo22nd Dynastyrdquo originatedin Per-Bast they were buried at Tanis and built extensively in the city The rulerssuch as Gemenef-khonsu-bak and Pedubast attested by monuments from Tanismust thus be placed later than Osorkon and Piye

Egyptological literature has been concerned with who these individual rulerswere and how they relate (genealogically and geo-politically) to the scheme ofdynasties derived from Manetho There can hardly be said to be consensussome preferring to see Osorkon III and his successors Takeloth III and Rudamunas the direct line from the 22nd Dynasty rulers Shoshenq I and Osorkon II whilstothers prefer to see them as an entirely separate ldquo23rd Dynastyrdquo that was based inMiddle or Upper Egypt Indeed for some writers the ldquo23rd Dynastyrdquo has becomeitinerant wandering around Egypt in search of a power-base from Thebes toHermopolis andor Herakleopolis (surely a reflection of the unsatisfactory natureof this particular reconstruction) Manethorsquos skeletal king-list has now been in-flated with numerous rulers attested monumentally who have been ascribed toit for no good reason In some chronologies there are contemporaneous ldquo23rdrdquodynasties based in Tanis Asyut Hermopolis Herakleopolis and Leontopolis

The main issue is the identity of Osorkon of Per-Bast Petrie and many Egyp-tologists of the late-19th and early-20th centuries identified him with Osorkon III awell-documented pharaoh who installed his daughter Shepenwepet I in the sig-nificant religious office of Godrsquos Wife of Amun at Thebes Shepenwepet I lateradopted the Kushite princess Amenirdis I as her successor to the role whichestablishes a direct link between the Libyan and Kushite dynasties More recent-ly the equation with Osorkon III was abandoned and Piyersquos opponent viewed asa far more obscure Osorkon lsquoIVrsquo The French team working at Tanis recovered agroup of blocks carrying the name of an Osorkon with relief images in an ldquoarch-aisingrdquo style⁶⁸ Although the Prenomen Usermaetre is that of Osorkon III the

Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 129 360ndash61 Robert G Morkot ldquoAll in the Detail Some Further Observation on lsquoArchaismrsquo and Style inLibyan-Kushite-Saite Egyptrdquo in Thebes in the First Millennium BC ed Elena Pischikova JuliaBudka and Kenneth Griffin (Cambridge Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014) 380ndash88 RobertG Morkot and Peter J James ldquoDead-Reckoning the Start of the 22nd Dynasty From Shoshenq VBack to Shoshenq Irdquo in James and van der Veen Solomon and Shishak 20ndash41

142 Robert G Morkot

blocks have generally been attributed to Osorkon lsquoIVrsquo The identity of Osorkondoes have bearing on the reference to Šilkanni

The Kushite military action led by Piye captured Khmunu relieved Nen-nesut and stormed Memphis Piye received the homage of all of the Libyan rul-ers with the exception of Tefnakht ndash in the Delta city of Hut-hery-ib (Athribis)The Kushite king then returned south the status quo ante restored Tefnakhttook his oath of loyalty in Sais

7 Summary and Conclusions

Irrespective of the alternative chronological and genealogical interpretations thathave been proposed very recently the broad view of Egypt at the time of Assy-riarsquos destruction of Samaria and the end of the Kingdom of Israel remains essen-tially the same Summing up these are the key points

The Kushites controlled the Nile valley throughout Kush (modern northernSudan) into southern Egypt They had a power base in Thebes with the northernlimit of their control somewhere in the AbydosGirga-Asyut region There werevassal kingdoms north of Kushite territory in the Nile valley Egypt was dividedinto five kingdoms and numerous smaller principalities

The kingdom of Khmunu (Hermopolis) was ruled by Nimlot at the time ofPiyersquos campaign The kingdom of Nen-nesut (Herakleopolis) may have been aKushite creation and no longer existed at the time of the Assyrian conquest inthe 670s BCE The Delta was divided between the principality of Sau (Sais) inthe west smaller principalities under Libyan Great Chiefs and Chiefs and twokingdoms in the central and eastern Delta Piyersquos opponent Tefnakht is onlyever referred to by the title ldquoChiefrdquo A ruler with full pharaonic style called Tef-nakht may be the same man or a second Tefnakht opinion is unsurprisinglydivided Bakenranef who also had full pharaonic style is the sole ruler attrib-uted to Manethorsquos 24th Dynasty and his defeat and death at the hands of Shaba-ka or Shabataka brought the whole of Egypt under Kushite rule The location ofthe kingdom ruled by Iuput is less certain In the eastern Delta the royal linewhich was associated with Per-Bast in the reign of Piye appears to have cometo an end Bakenranef is attested from Tanis and re-used monuments of otherrulers have been excavated there also documented by the Assyrian list ofEgyptrsquos rulers

Finally the evidence albeit relatively limited does indicate that there wassignificant trade between the Kushites the Delta rulers of both Tanis and Saisand the kingdoms and city states of Israel Judah and the Phoenician coast Itwas in the interests of any Egyptian rulers to ensure that these states did not


come under Assyrian domination and hence they would have become involvedin the politics of the region The capabilities and ambitions of the Kushite rulerswere certainly greater than those of the Libyan pharaohs and when they gainedcontrol of all of Egypt their policy seems to have become more active if not ag-gressive

144 Robert G Morkot


Ron E Tappysup1

The Annals of Sargon II and theArchaeology of SamariaRhetorical Claims Empirical Evidence

1 Introduction

The archaeology of Samaria and by extension the political history it reflectshave emerged as vexing topics for those interested in the closing decade of Isra-elite sovereignty over this once grand capital city Improved editions of key As-syrian texts in both hard copy and digital formatssup2 and recent analyses of reliefs

The bulk of this paper first appeared under the title ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samaria To-ward a Dialogue between Texts and Archaeologyrdquo in Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Ar-chaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie WhiteCrawford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jerusalem The WF Albright Institute of Archaeological Researchand the Israel Exploration Society 2007) 258ndash79 I am indebted to the editors and publishers ofthat Festschrift for granting me permission to reprint here a revised version of that article whichbecame the basis for my seminar presentation in Munich Conferences such as the one organizedby Shuichi Hasegawa sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and held atthe Schloss Nymphenburg on 15ndash 17 March 2017 help open the way toward both solving somedifficulties related to this historical period and generating new ideas and questions to considerI am grateful to have been a participant in this stimulating event ndash The following abbreviationsare used in this chapter ANET = James B Pritchard ed Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating tothe Old Testament (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1955) ARAB II = Daniel David Luck-enbill Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia vol II (Chicago IL The University of ChicagoPress 1926) CAD = The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago(Chicago IL University of Chicago Press 1956ndash) SS I = John Winter Crowfoot Kathleen MaryKenyon and Eliezer L Sukenik The Buildings at Samaria (London Palestine ExplorationFund 1942) SS III = John Winter Crowfoot Grace Mary Crowfoot and Kathleen Mary KenyonSamaria-Sebaste III The Objects (London Palestine Exploration Fund 1957) To printed volumes that have appeared since Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian and BabylonianChronicles (Locust Valley NY Augustin 1975 repr Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2000) addHayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Editions with Intro-ductions Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities1994) Alan R Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-As-syrian Text Corpus Project 1994) Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (Goumlt-tingen Cuvillier Verlag 1994) Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Ti-glath-Pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona LakeIN Eisenbrauns 2011) For relevant materials from the years following the fall of Samaria (Sen-nacherib) see Eckart Frahm Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften (Wien Institut fur Orientalis-

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-008

and epigraphs from the Assyrian palacessup3 have supplemented a wave of renewedinterest in the period spanning the years 732ndash720 BCE⁴ Yet a perusal of the re-sultant publications reveals the absence of any consensus regarding the histor-ical particulars that led to Samariarsquos decline Moreover uncertainties surround-ing the archaeology of Samaria have compromised the success of these text-based studies in reaching firm conclusions founded on data drawn from differ-ent but mutually essential disciplines A recent detailed investigation into thearchaeology of this site⁵ however now allows for a productive interdisciplinaryeffort to settle some of the historical and linguistic questions that remain

One such question concerns the sequence and nature of Assyriarsquos militaryactivities against Samaria during the reigns of Shalmaneser V and Sargon IIWhat precisely does the Babylonian Chronicle (1i28) mean when it says of Shal-

tik der Universitat 1997) plus Albert Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny The Royal Inscriptions ofSennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681 BC) Part 1 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2012) AlbertKirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681BC) Part 2 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2014) For excellent digital resources see the toolsnow available in the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Online (httporaccmuseumupennedurinapindexhtml) and other references cited in the ldquoat-a-glancerdquoglossaries for the corpora of Tiglath-pileser III Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal presented inJamie Novotny ldquoThe Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V An At-a-GlanceGlossary of the RINAP 1 Corpusrdquo SAAB 19 (2011ndash 12) 1ndash27 id ldquoThe Royal Inscriptions of Esar-haddon An At-a-Glance Glossary of the RINAP 4 Corpusrdquo SAAB 19 (2011ndash 12) 29ndash86 id ldquoTheRoyal Inscriptions of Sennacherib An At-a-Glance Glossary of the RINAP 3 Corpusrdquo SAAB 20(2013ndash 14) 79ndash 129 See eg Pauline Albenda The Palace of Sargon King of Assyria Monumental Wall Reliefs atDur-Sharrukin from Original Drawings Made at the Time of their Discovery in 1843ndash 1844 by Bottaand Flandin (Paris Recherche sur les Civilisations 1986) Christopher B F Walker ldquoThe Epi-graphsrdquo in Pauline Albenda The Palace of Sargon King of Assyria 107ndash 14 Ruth JacobyldquoThe Representation and Identification of Cities on Assyrian Reliefsrdquo IEJ 41 (1991) 112ndash31Norma Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukin and Sargon IIrsquos Western CampaignsrdquoTA 21 (1994) 255ndash75 After the groundbreaking article by Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon II of AssurrdquoJCS 12 (1958) 33ndash40 the principal studies include Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Backgroundto the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)rdquo Bib 71 (1990) 206ndash25 John H Hayes and Jeffrey K KuanldquoThe Final Years of Samaria (730ndash720 BC)rdquo Bib 72 (1991) 153ndash81 Bob Becking The Fall of Sa-maria An Historical and Archaeological Summary (Leiden Brill 1992) Gershon Galil ldquoThe LastYears of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of Samariardquo CBQ 57 (1995) 52ndash65 Gershon GalilThe Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Leiden Brill 1996) Kyle Lawson Younger JrldquoThe Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 M Christine TetleyldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Reason for Rejecting the Hypothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ64 (2002) 59ndash77 (see also n 19 below) Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria Vol II The Eighth Century BCE (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2001)

148 Ron E Tappy

maneser uruŠa-ma-ra-ʾ-in iḫ-te-pi ldquohe broke (the city of) Samariardquo Or what didthe scribes of Sargon intend when they chose the verbs lamucirc (ldquoto surround hemin or besiegerdquo)⁶ sšapānu (ldquoto devastate flatten or level [as if by flood]rdquo)⁷kašādu (ldquoto conquerrdquo)⁸ racircbu (ldquoto shake make tremblerdquo)⁹ or šalālu (ldquoto carryoff plunder [people or property]rdquo)sup1⁰ to describe his activities against this cityNimrud Prism iv 25ndash41sup1sup1 which delineates more different types of actionsagainst Samaria than any other single text records that Sargon fought againstthe city (maḫāṣu) reckoned (or perhaps ldquodeliveredrdquo) its people property andgods as spoil (manucirc) formed or organized a chariot corp with Israelite chariot-eers and equipment (kaṣāru) resettled or reorganized Israelite deportees in theAssyrian homeland (ṣabātu) increased the population of the city (tacircruatāru hellipugrave-še-meugrave-še-šib = šemucirc[w]ašābu)sup1sup2 by bringing in (erēbu) peoples conqueredelsewhere by his own hands (kišitti ŠUii-ia) appointed his own governor overthe reorganized city (šakānu) and counted all the affected individuals as citizens

The Great Summary Inscription (or Die Groszlige Prunkinschrift) ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sar-gons II 197 l 23 (trans ARAB II sect 55 Becking The Fall of Samaria 26) The Bull Inscription (or Die Inschrift auf den Stierkolossen) ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II63 l 21 (trans ARAB II sect 92 Becking The Fall of Samaria 33 = ldquoto usurprdquo) The Great Summary Inscription ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 197 l 23 (trans ARAB IIsect 2 Becking The Fall of Samaria 26) the Palace Doors Inscription IV (or SchwelleninschriftNo 4) ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 261 ll 31ndash32 (trans ARAB II sect 99 Becking TheFall of Samaria 27) the Annals ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 87ndash89 l 14 (trans ARAB IIsect 4 ANET 284 Becking The Fall of Samaria 37) Note also the use of kašādu in the CylinderInscription (or Die Inschrift auf den Tonzylindern l 20) as a generic reference to the conquestof various peoples (the Tamudi Ibadidi Marsimani and Hayapacirc) whom Sargon resettled inthe region of Samaria The Cylinder Inscription ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 34 l 19 (trans ARAB II sect 118Becking The Fall of Samaria 32 = ldquoto subjugaterdquo) for similar content in the Annals compareFuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 110 ll 120ndash23 trans ARAB II sect 17) The Small Summary Inscription (or Die Kleine Prunkinschrift) ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sar-gons II 76 l 15 (trans ARAB II sect 80 ANET 285 Becking The Fall of Samaria 27ndash28 = ldquoto plun-derrdquo) the Annals ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 87ndash9 l 15 (trans ARAB II sect 4 ANET 284Becking The Fall of Samaria 37 = ldquoto plunderrdquo) The Nimrud Prism D (= ND 2601+3401+3417) and E (= ND 3400+3402+3408+3409) ― CyrilJohn Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954) 179ndash80 col ivll 37ndash39 (trans Becking The Fall of Samaria 28ndash30 compare the Annals in Fuchs Die Inschrif-ten Sargons II 88 l 16) For a discussion of which pair of verbs best fits the context see Stephanie Dalley ldquoForeignChariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon IIrdquo Iraq 47 (1985) 36 Dal-ley chooses the latter readings

The Annals of Sargon II and the Archaeology of Samaria 149

of Assyria (manucirc)sup1sup3 But do any of these terms imply a physical destruction ofthe capitalrsquos infrastructure as most scholars have traditionally presumed Toreach a credible answer to these inquiries one must assess the textual evidenceagainst a backdrop provided by the actual archaeological record and vice-versaNo study to date has pursued this symbiotic strategy as its principal method

This investigation then evaluates the compatibility of the textual and ar-chaeological evidence by proceeding on two distinct but related levels First itdraws from the rich and varied language of conquest attested in eight majortexts (especially the annalistic records) of Sargon II to describe his military tac-tics and feats against a host of cities and towns A survey of semantic roots usedby Assyrian scribes allows a fresh evaluation of the terminology relating specif-ically to Samaria for which the catalogue of terms seems noticeably conservativein scope compared to the claims relating to other capital cities Following an ex-ploration of Sargonrsquos battle rhetoric the study examines several key but repre-sentative stratigraphic contexts in the archaeological record from Samaria Theresult shows an appreciable degree of harmony between descriptions in the As-syrian texts and the depositional history of the site itself a fact that enhancesour understanding of the cityrsquos final days

Such an enquiry uncovers perhaps a certain paradox between the two prin-cipal disciplines involved (broadly defined as textual studies and archaeology)At least when it comes to the late history of Israelite Samaria it seems that tex-tual scholars often approach the pertinent biblical passages disassemble theminto their smallest discernible parts evaluate the sources behind and historicalcredibility of each part and more often than not ultimately deem the receivedtext with which they started a mere contrivance a compilation so riddled withhistoriographic pitfalls that it can tell us little to nothing about what actuallyhappened as the Israelite capital slowly collapsed Archaeologists on the otherhand suffer from the opposite hermeneutical hardship They seldom begin witha body of evidence that even purports to represent a complete logical under-standable accurate entity Consequently they struggle with myriad bits of rawdata that require detailed analysis and systemization as a first step toward deriv-ing any credible interpretation Rather than commencing with a whole though per-haps heavily redacted entity (such as a final text) that over the course of close in-spection often breaks down into discordant parts archaeologists who retrieve and

For other references to Samaria or the House (Dynasty) of Omri by Sargon II see (a) theAššur Charter ― Henry W F Saggs ldquoHistorical Texts and Fragments of Sargon II of AssyriaI The lsquoAššur Charterrsquordquo Iraq 37 (1975) 11ndash20 l 20 (trans ARAB II sect 133ndash35 Becking The Fallof Samaria 34ndash35) and (b) the Annals ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 87ndash89 ll 11 25(trans ARAB II sect 4 ANET 284 Becking The Fall of Samaria 37)

150 Ron E Tappy

study material culture typically begin by facing a debris field of fragmentary datafrom which they must reconstruct or at least extrapolate coherent patterns thatlend themselves to further comparative analysis In short it has been my obser-vation that higher critical biblical scholars tend to be splitters while archaeolo-gists― commonly and in one sense correctly charged with engaging in a ldquodestruc-tive sciencerdquo ― labor to be joiners the methodologies range from intentionaldeconstruction on the one side to attempted reconstruction on the other But cer-tainly the interpretative challenges are legion on both sides Neither texts (whetherbiblical or cuneiform) nor artifacts are above or beyond interpretation a fact thatwill raise pertinent questions throughout each of the two-staged discussion thatfollows

2 The Fall of Samaria and the Fallout fromScholarship

The official excavation reports on the work of the Joint Expedition in 1932ndash 1934and the British Expedition in 1935 typically exhibit a great deal of certainty re-garding the chronology of nearly all phases of occupation at Samaria Withinthis context of confidence the two dates most highly touted as fixed beyondany reasonable doubt consist in the terminus post quem of Kenyonrsquos ldquoPeriod Irdquoand the terminus ante quem of ldquoPeriod Vrdquo According to the report the destruc-tion of the so-called Period V House and the contents of the associated Pit i stemdirectly from the assault against the city by the Assyrians around 720 BCEsup1⁴ Inboth the official report and a subsequent popular account of Samariarsquos historyKenyon referred to the ldquoextensive destructionrdquo of the site by Sargon IIsup1⁵ and as-serted that the archaeological record provided eloquent testimony to ldquothe com-plete destruction of the capital cityrdquosup1⁶

Judging from the archaeological reporting by the excavators themselvesthen one might logically expect to find a single substantial destruction levelat Samaria with the pottery-bearing loci situated in clearly datable and primarystratigraphic contextssup1⁷ Archaeologists working at sites in Syria-Palestine and

SS I 107ndash 108 SS III 199 Kathleen Mary Kenyon Royal Cities of the Old Testament (New York Schocken 1971) 133 The excavation director however recognized the compromised nature of many of these de-posits For example see Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 175ndash76 for a discussionof the differing assessments by Crowfoot and Kenyon of the levels assigned to Period V For an-


the Aegean world responded with uncritical approval both to Kenyonrsquos historicalevaluation of Period V and to her suggested terminal date for its depositional his-torysup1⁸ It is essential then to determine whether a coherent destruction level ex-ists somewhere in Periods VndashVII at Samaria that might correlate to an Assyrianassault during the closing decade of Israelite sovereignty there

Unlike the certainty of interpretations based on the archaeological reportsbiblical and cuneiform studies have failed to produce clear or consistent resultswith regard to Assyriarsquos actions at Samaria Among other limitations no consen-sus has emerged regarding even the number let alone the character of Assyrianmilitary campaigns against the Israelite capital Rather than seeing a singlemajor conflagration at Samaria as did the excavators literary analysts varywidely in the number of physical assaults against the city they purport to readin the Assyrian records

A series of studies in the 1990ssup1⁹ took issue with Hayim Tadmorrsquos articlesup2⁰ inwhich he rejected earlier views holding that the section of the BabylonianChronicle relating to Shalmaneser V referred not to Samaria but to some othercitysup2sup1 or that Shalmaneser alone conquered Samaria and exiled the Israelitessup2sup2or that Shalmaneser simply began the siege of Samaria in 724 while Sargon fin-

other example of interpretative tension in the written comments of the excavators see TappyThe Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 491ndash92 regarding the so-called Ivory HousePalace ofKing Ahab One analyst even declared that Period V represented one of three occupational phases at Sa-maria to which ldquoabsolute dates may be assignedrdquo (John S Holladay Ninth and Eighth CenturyPottery from Northern Palestine [unpublished ThD diss Harvard University Cambridge MA1966] 60 emphasis added) Holladay included Period III (1966 60ndash65) Period V (196665ndash77) and the deposit in Pit i (1966 67ndash79) in his catalogue of precisely datable pottery peri-ods at Samaria Contrast however his subsequent comments on pp 65 and 131 Cited in n 4 above As a prelude to these articles see Antti Laato ldquoNew Viewpoints on theChronology of the Kings of Judah and Israelrdquo ZAW 98 (1986) 210ndash21 and Jeremy Hughes Se-crets of the Times Myths and History in Biblical Chronology (Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press1990) Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon II of Assurrdquo Hugo Winckler ldquoNachtragrdquo ZA 2 (1887) 351ndash52 Albert T Olmstead ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo AJSL 21 (190405) 179ndash82 also more recentlyWilliam W Hallo ldquoFrom Qarqar to Carchemish Assyria and Israel in the Light of New Discov-eriesrdquo BA 23 (1960) 34ndash61 Alfred Jepsen ldquoNoch einmal zur israelitisch-juumldischen Chronolo-gierdquo VT 18 (1968) 31ndash46 Julian Reade ldquoMesopotamian Guidelines for Biblical ChronologyrdquoSMS 4 (1981) 1ndash9 Edwin R Thiele The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Grand RapidsMI Kregel 1994 rev edition) Hughes Secrets of the Times

152 Ron E Tappy

ished it in the first year of his rule (72221)sup2sup3 Instead Tadmor formulated theldquoTwo-Conquest Hypothesisrdquo which held that Shalmaneser besieged the city in723ndash722 but that Sargon ultimately ldquoconqueredrdquo it in his first western campaignin 720 BCE (rather than in his accession year)

More recent investigations have offered various alternative proposals drawnsolely from each readerrsquos own understanding of the biblical and cuneiform textsA thorough critique of the multifarious arguments of each study is unnecessaryhere since concise summaries of recent scholarship are availablesup2⁴ In his sur-vey Gershon Galil presents the various studies in order of their appearancewhile Kyle Lawson Younger Jr groups the studies according to interpretive sim-ilarities Here I need only note that Nadav Narsquoamansup2⁵ argues for at least three As-syrian assaults against Samaria (with minimal physical damage to the city) dur-ing the penultimate decade of the eighth century BCEsup2⁶ Hayes and Kuan on theother hand believe that Samaria submitted to Assyrian pressure (as a result ofstated or implied military operations) on no fewer than four occasions duringthe 720ssup2⁷ In two separate publications Galilsup2⁸ suggested that Samaria remainedloyal to Assyria until 723 BCE when Shalmaneser V invaded the northern king-dom conquered its outlying cities and arrested Hoshea (Babylonian Chronicle2Kgs 175) The cityrsquos ministers and officers ran the government for the next twoand a half years without appointing a new king With a limited Assyrian forcedeployed at Samaria the broad-scale siege became a blockade of the capitalcity that resembled the unfolding of events at Tyre This uneasy situation contin-ued until 720 BCE when Sargon II finally conquered the city and initiated a re-settlement of foreign populations theresup2⁹

Julius Lewy Die Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda (Giessen Toumlpelmann 1927) Sig-mund Mowinckel ldquoDie Chronologie der israelitischen und juumldischen Koumlnigerdquo AcOr 10 (1932)161ndash277 William Foxwell Albright ldquoThe Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of IsraelrdquoBASOR 100 (1945) 16ndash22 more recently Knud Tage Andersen ldquoNoch einmal Die Chronologieder Koumlnige von Israel und Judardquo SJOT 3 (1989) 1ndash45 Galil ldquoThe Last Yearsrdquo Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samariardquo Believing that the evidence shows only a partial destruction of Samaria Galil ldquoThe LastYears of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 59 countered this position by noting ldquoit is difficult to imaginethat Samaria escaped total destruction despite the fact that three campaigns [would] have beendirected against it in a period of less than eight yearsrdquo Hayes and Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samariardquo Galil ldquoThe Last Yearsrdquo Galil The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah In my judgment it seems possible that Shalmaneser V had earlier employed the tacticalstrategy of a city-wide blockade at Samaria Although 2Kgs 171ndash6 appears heavily redactedand therefore quite compromised in its ability to shed clear light onto history the final recensionof the text (even if composite in nature) might actually preserve some memory of a series of un-


Younger also sees two military campaigns against Samaria with the first oc-curring in 722 BCE (during Hoshearsquos ninth year) under Shalmaneser V (2Kgs 1761810) and the second coming after Sargonrsquos defeat of the anti-Assyrian coalitionat Qarqar in 720 BCE Following this victory Sargon moved very rapidly andbriefly against Samaria before proceeding to sites farther south (eg Raphia)While Narsquoaman wondered how Samaria if so weakened under its prolongedsiege and capture by Shalmaneser V could face Sargonrsquos army already in 720with any respectable fighting force or resistance Younger argued the case fromthe opposite direction For him the physical and political spoilation of Samarialate in the reign of Shalmaneser V becomes not the historical problem but thehistorical reason why Sargonrsquos raid could proceed with such swiftness and deci-siveness and allow him to move southward so soon after his foray through theEphraimite hill countrysup3⁰

Focusing attention more on the regnal chronologies of Hoshea and Hezekiahthan on the Assyrian texts Tetley infers at least two major campaigns against Sa-maria by Tiglath-pileser III already in 733ndash32sup3sup1 and 727 (2Kgs 166) According toTetley the latter year marks the accession of Hoshea to the Israelite throneWhileShalmaneser V again ldquoravagedrdquo Samaria around 723 BCE the protracted three-

happy encounters between this Assyrian king and the king and people of Samaria If so thedeteriorating relationship appears to have unfolded in at least three stages First Samariawas brought under vassal status and charged with tribute duties ( החנמולבשיודבעעשוהול־יהיו v 3) Later after a breach in payments the city was quarantined (ldquoenclosedrdquo) and its king im-prisoned (Note the alliterative רסא hellip רצע v 4 cf Akkadian esēru which Sennacherib used inrelation to Jerusalem) As in the previous verse these two terms do not constitute a simple re-dundancy rather they may once again allude to a two-tiered development More than connotingjust the arrest and incarceration of Hoshea the two actions could signal the initial ldquorestraininghindering or shutting up (as in lsquohemming inrsquo)rdquo of the scope of Hoshearsquos territorial rule followedby his own house arrest These developments constitute the tipping point not only in the pas-sage as it now stands but also in the sustainability of Samaria as capital A blockade of thestill unfallen city would allow the Assyrians a free hand throughout the region of Samaria( ץראה־לכב v 5) During this period the capital itself lay under constant guard with its king im-prisoned At this point Shalmaneser might easily have employed the metaphor used later bySennacherib for Hoshea was indeed penned up ldquolike a bird in a cagerdquo Finally in the third stra-tegic state and undoubtedly after significant damage to infrastructure across the kingdom Shal-maneser V completed the conquest of Samaria ( דכל ~ ḫepucirc) and initiated his deportation of itscitizens ( הלג v 6) Samariarsquos weakened state may also argue for its relatively minor role in the Qarqar coalitiona fact reflected in its last-place listing in all the Assyrian sources and possibly also in the depic-tions on the palace reliefs (see Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukinrdquo 255ndash75) Cf Assyrian Eponym Chronicles edited by Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 2Kgs1529

154 Ron E Tappy

year siege did not occur until 721 to 71918 BCE during Sargonrsquos rule This pro-posal therefore rejects Tadmorrsquos double-conquest theory but devises a similarscenario for Tiglath-pileser III with additional military efforts orchestrated byShalmaneser V and Sargon II Yet the thesis depends on two questionable ac-tions (1) retaining the old Di- reading at the beginning of the place name inthe AEC entry for 728 BCE and (2) restoring the missing place name in theAEC entry for 727 with ldquoto Damascusrdquo Neither premise is convincingsup3sup2

In sum these and other studies generally agree that Samaria faced a seriesof attacks by more than one Assyrian leader and that the cityrsquos trouble culminat-ed in a final major assault led by Sargon II in 720 BCE All investigators seem toaccept that both Shalmaneser V and Sargon II participated in the ultimate de-cline of the city yet they rearrange andor redate specific episodes within theconquest sequence and often see an increased number of military confrontationsearly in the 720s All the studies tend to accept one crucial fact however manytimes the Assyrians approached the capital at Samaria the imperial army physi-cally destroyed the city at some point (if not multiple times) From this burgeon-ing corpus of literary studies then one might expect to find one or more destruc-tion levels in the archaeology of Samaria while the official excavation reportespoused a single wholesale debris layer from this period Most of these textualstudies however fail to distinguish between literary references to Samaria thecity and notices of Samaria the region Similarly none addresses directly andsystematically the different Akkadian terms used to describe the military actionsof the Assyrian kings

Tetley must still accept Smithrsquos old reading of Di- over Millardrsquos new reading alḪi- as the be-ginning of the place name in the entry for the year 728 George Smith ldquoOn a New Fragment ofthe Assyrian Canon Belonging to the Reigns of Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneserrdquo Transactionsof the Society of Biblical Archaeology 2 (1873) 321ndash22 Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Em-pire 59 Tetleyrsquos claim that the entry must ldquoremain uncertainrdquo since it is ldquopartly illegiblerdquo (TetleyldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fallrdquo 67) is misleading Millardrsquos transliteration is in fact derived notfrom a reconstructed text but from a witness in which the determinative and first letter of theplace name are clear (Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 45) Thus the readingseems more secure than Tetley allows and it poses a serious obstacle to her confident rejectionof the current understanding of Tiglath-pileserrsquos activities in the west


3 The Language of Conquest in the Annalsof Sargon II

Drawing from the Annals of Sargon II I have assembled a study sample of 327literary references (mostly verbs) to represent the language of conquest chosenby this king to describe his military tactics and feats against a host of citiesand townssup3sup3 Working with this broad dataset helps to place the description ofevents at Samaria in a much wider literary (if not historical) context Whereasonly one verb (ḫepucirc) occurs in Mesopotamian sources in conjunction with Shal-maneser Vrsquos actions against Samaria Sargon IIrsquos scribes used thirteen differentsemantic roots spread over eight major texts to portray his relations with thiscitysup3⁴ On at least two occasions in the Annals (ll 209 391a) Sargon himself em-ploys the term ḫepucirc but never in connection to his maneuvers at Samaria Thesample also shows that Sargon varied his terminology relating to the Israelitecapital Of the thirteen verbal roots he used only three more than once andonly one of the three occurred multiple times (šalālu appears twice as doesmanucirc kašādu however appears five times) The principal concept that setsforth Sargonrsquos activities at Samaria then centers on the term kašādu

The nuanced meanings of this term illustrate an important hermeneuticalprincipal that will apply to virtually all the Assyrian verbs cited in this studyAs seen in the glossaries published by Novotnysup3⁵ kašādu can mean ldquoto conquerto arriverdquo (in the texts of Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V) ldquoto arrive reachcapture conquer catch up withrdquo (Sennacherib) or ldquoto arrive reach conquerachieverdquo (Esarhaddon) Modern translations of battlefield texts from the Neo-As-syrian kings consistently render kašādu as simply ldquoto conquerrdquo and that defini-tion proves an adequate one for the present investigation But nothing in thegreater semantic range of kašādu inherently implies a physical destruction ofa targeted city Thus while I will often provide a basic definition (and as neededalternative translations) for Assyrian words as they appear in the following sec-tion a full lexical study of those terms would not alter to any appreciable degreethe argument of each section or the overall thesis as outlined above and devel-

The sample is based on the transliteration in Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 86ndash181ll 1ndash424 (cf ARAB II sectsect 4ndash47) and all references follow his lineation Fuchs collated his num-bering system with those of both Hugo Winckler Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons nach den Papierab-klatschen und Originalen neu herausgegeben Indash II (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1889) and Arthur G Lie TheInscriptions of Sargon II King of Assyria Part I The Annals (Paris Geuthner 1929) See above Introduction For references see above n 2

156 Ron E Tappy

oped throughout the paper One could say that Sargon either ldquoarrived atrdquo orldquoconqueredrdquo Samaria without substantially altering my discussion Ratherthan the variant meanings of individual verbs then the fact that virtually allthe Neo-Assyrian kings used this same catalogue of terms and the idioms inwhich they were embedded raises a more vital hermeneutical concern if thebulk of these expressions reflects merely propagandistic rhetoric that was in cur-rent standard usage throughout the duration of the Neo-Assyrian empire whatcredible history can we draw from them It is well known that historiographicissues plague the cuneiform sources as well as the biblical recordssup3⁶ The pur-pose of this paper therefore aims to examine the ways in which the Assyriankings (Sargon in particular) chose to present themselves in the literary recordsthey commissioned and then to evaluate the historical veracity of those self-de-pictions against the physical remains from Samaria

I have divided the Assyrian terms in my overall study sample into five broadcategories In categories 2 and 3 the discussion includes various sub-categories

Category 1

The first set of terms describes Sargonrsquos preparation for and procession to battlethe start of siege operations and various symbolic actions (such as the offeringof sacrifices) conducted at the successful completion of an operation The ac-tions extend from basic maneuvers to the more serious outset of a siege As per-haps expected the verbs alāku (ldquoto gordquo Gtn ldquoto marchrdquo) and šapāru (ldquoto dis-patch [an army]rdquo) appear most often in this list but still not frequently (7timesalāku 4times šapāru) The term lemucirc (ldquoto besiegerdquo) also denotes the beginning ofa siege and Sargon applied this concept to Samaria in the Great Summary In-scription Interestingly the kings whose reigns sandwiched that of Sargon ―from Tiglath-pileser III to Esarhaddon ― apparently did not use this term tosignal the start of an assault On two separate occasions relating to his prepara-tions against Marduk-apla-iddina (Merodach-baladan) of Babylon (ll 264 329)Sargon says akṣura ušmanni ldquoI set (constructed) my camp in orderrdquosup3⁷ In Nimrud

See especially the works of Tadmor cited above also Hayim Tadmor ldquoObservations on As-syrian Historiographyrdquo in Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of Jacob Joel Finkelsteined Maria de Jong Ellis (Hamden CT Archon Books 1977) 209ndash 13 Adam Zertal ldquoThe Heart of the Monarchy Patterns of Settlement and Historical Considera-tions of the Israelite Kingdom of Samariardquo in Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israeland Jordan ed Amihai Mazar (Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press 2001) 38ndash64 esp 57ndash58proposed the identification of an Assyrian military camp at the site of el-Qarsquoadeh located


Prism IV 34 the same verb (kaṣāru) describes Sargonrsquos integration (ldquogatheringrdquoor ldquoorganizingrdquo) of 200 conscripted Israelite chariots or perhaps charioteersinto his royal force A number of other words occur in this category but usuallyno more than one or two times each

Category 2

The second class of terms includes generic references to various levels of the de-feat andor subjugation of a city though the physical destruction of property isgenerally not mentioned in the same context I have grouped these words underfive sub-headings

Sub-category 21

Some terms represent general references to the political collapse of cities orlands The verb kašādu (ldquoto conquerrdquo) or various expressions based on the deriv-ative kišittu (eg kišitti qātī[šu]-ia Aššur PN ldquothe conquest of my own hands of Aššur of a specified place namerdquo) clearly constitute the most widely usedconcept within this group Such instances occur at least 38 times in the studysample A parallel phrase ina qātī uṣabbit ldquoI capturedseized [the cavalry ofUrsacirc the Urartean] with my own handrdquo) also appears (l 134) The Annals employtwo verbs šakānu (ll 326 385) and maḫāṣu (l 290) in idiomatic usage withdabducirc to denote a general defeat or more specifically the bloody massacre ofan army in pitched battle The implication seems clear the enemy was foughthit beaten and the defeat (dabducirc) was establishedput in place But again nei-ther term refers unequivocally to the demolition of urban architecture Sargonalso sometimes referred metaphorically to his victories through such images asldquoI enveloped or overwhelmedrdquo (saḫāpu) like a storm (ll 69 296) with a net(ll 86 421) or with the splendor of Aššur (l 165) On one occasion the scribesused kamucirc with the phrase kīma tibūt aribicirc (ldquoI capturedoverwhelmed like aswarm of locustsrdquo ― with aribicirc[ldquolocustsrdquo] stemming from erbu) as a trenchantsynonym for both kašādu and saḫāpu a situation that extends Sargonrsquos actions

only 10 km northeast of Samaria and his suggestion that the camp served to support the siege ofSamaria in 722 BCE remains somewhat tentative since the majority of pottery from the site ap-parently dates to the late Iron Age and Persian periods

158 Ron E Tappy

to the defeatkilling (dacircku) of citizens and the physical destruction of their cap-ital by fire (šarāpu ldquoto burnrdquo ll 86ndash87 see below category no 5)

Sub-category 22

At least two verbs relate directly to the deposition or subjugation of local leaders(nakāru ldquoto changerdquo and kanāšu ldquoto make [someone] bow downrdquo ll 244 and391 respectively)

Sub-category 23

Various phrases describe psychological tactics employed by the Assyrians someof which prompted self-destructive acts by enemy forces or towns In such in-stances gloomsup3⁸ is cast (naducirc l 190) and tortures are established (šakānull 163 306) as great mourning grips the entire land (bašucirc l 162) Hapless sub-jects must seize the hand or feet of Sargon (ṣabātu ll 272d 284 286b 294 300)or even kiss his feet (nasāqu l 287) They may suffer having their own handsburned (qamucirc l 238) or pierced (paṭāru l 347 cf ldquoto inciserdquo) exposure to pub-lic gaze (kullumu ldquoto show or revealrdquo l 238) or parching thirst (ṣabātu nowwith laplaptu ll 283ndash84) In extreme cases panic so ldquofalls uponoverwhelmsrdquothe leaders or people that they can no longer coherently identify even thecause of their fear (maqātu l 307) and they may begin to lay waste to theirown property (ēdurūma ušaḫribu lt ḫarābu l 293) attempt to hide themselvesby ldquocrawlingrdquo to the farthest corners of distant mountains (raqātu l 303) oreven end (ldquofinishrdquo) their own life as did Ursacirc of Urarṭu (napišta[zi]-šu iq-ti ltqatucirc l 165)

Sub-category 24

Certain terms connote the results of economic hardships imposed by Sargon onspecific cities such as his allowing the Assryian army to eat (akālu l 289) or cutdown (kašāṭu ll 290 358) local orchards to cut the date palms (nakāsu l 358)sup3⁹

ARAB II sect 23 the Akkadian term akukūtu is ldquoa poetic synonym for firerdquo though it can alsodenote a rare and ominous red glow in the sky see CAD A1 285a The Annals apply this same term to people in l 349 In the Gtn Stem nakāsu means ldquotobreach repeatedlyrdquo


and to enclose (that is blockade) the capital city (esēru l 357)⁴⁰ as the devasta-tion occurs in the outlying kingdom⁴sup1 (see below)

Sub-category 25

The final subset of words in this group denotes the killing of people or enemytroops though again these terms typically appear without further reference tothe physical destruction of the towns inhabited by these individuals The twomost common verbs in this class include dacircku (ldquoto defeat killrdquo ll 87 131 134387a) and maqātu (Š = ldquoto cut downrdquo ll 122⁴sup2 168 376) both of which basicallymean ldquoto killrdquo⁴sup3 Less frequently the scribes used stronger terms such as napāṣu(ldquoto massacre slaughterrdquo l 344) šaqāru (ldquoto decimaterdquo l 346 D = ldquotopiercerdquo⁴⁴) nakāsu (ldquoto cut downoffrdquo in the sense of ldquoto slaughterrdquo l 349) orsalāḫu (ldquoto sprinkle or bespatter with the venom of deathrdquo l 350⁴⁵) conceptswhich they set against the rare occurrence of bulluṭu (lt balāṭu ldquoto spare [some-onersquos life]rdquo l 387b)

Category 3

The third group of conquest terminology describes the reorganization of subju-gated areas and like the previous group incorporates a number of sub-areas

The term ṣabātu may also appear in reference to the blockading or sealing of borders as inthe case of Muški and Urarṭu (Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 128 l 219 ARAB II sect 27) In certain instances such as Tiglath-pileser III at Damascus in 733 BCE and Sennacherib atthe gates of Jerusalem in 701 Assyrian leaders may have appealed to their blockade of a city ldquoasa face-saving device to cover for a failure to take the enemyrsquos capital and punish the rebelliouskingrdquo (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 79 n 11rsquo) This passage claims that after the slaughter Sargon deported the surviving remnant and re-settled them in Samaria (see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 320) Compare also necircru in l 320 Both necircru and dacircku sometimes appear in conjunction withkašādu Sargon claims to have pierced the hand of an enemy with an arrow just as the enemy man-aged to slip away ldquolike a mongoose through the gate of his cityrdquo (Fuchs Die Inschriften SargonsII 334) See CAD I 139ndash40 for a discussion of imat mūti ldquopoisonous foam [or] slaver produced fromthe mouths of angry gods demons humans and animalsrdquo

160 Ron E Tappy

Sub-category 31

To recognize the installation of a new ruler (either a local citizen or an Assyrianofficial) on a recently subdued throne Sargon most often employed the basicverb šakānu ldquoto put place setrdquo or ldquoto establish depositrdquo (ll 204 340 245254 276 386b 409) He also caused someone to rise to a throne (Š-stem of [w]ašābu ldquoto make occupyrdquo) assigned a specific person to rule over an area ([w]acircru D = ldquoto commissionrdquo l 386b) or commanded (lit ldquospokerdquo) a new rulerinto power (qabucirc ll 183 409)

Sub-category 32

In addition to sparing the deportation or even the life of a subordinate (seebalāṭu above also l 272a) Sargon sometimes presented other incentives tolocal rulers by offering them cities (šarāku ltin broken contextgt and nadānul 198) increasing the area under their control (rabucirc l 198) and forgiving or dis-regarding their misdeeds (mecircšu l 272e) Following Sargon Sennacherib certain-ly employed the first two strategies by transferring cities and towns captured inthe Shephelah of Judah to the control of Philistine kings at Ashdod Ekron andGaza⁴⁶

Sub-category 33

When recording local cities that Sargon considered to be Assyrian property or theoccupants of those cities whom he reckoned as actual Assyrians the Annals typ-ically resort to the common notion of ldquocountingrdquo (manucirc 14 occurrences in thestudy sample) To facilitate this status Sargon regularly gathered people togetherunder a ruler (paḫāru l 197) ldquoled them awayrdquo to bring them within the Assyrianborder (abāku l 281) ― that is within the boundary marked by a kudurru-stone― and made or ldquoinstalledrdquo them as vassals of Aššur (emēdu tupšikki Aššurll 204 423)

Ron E Tappy ldquoHistorical and Geographical Notes on the lsquoLowland Districtsrsquo of Judah in Josh-ua 1533ndash47rdquo VT 58 (2008) 381ndash403


Sub-category 34

Sargonrsquos treatment of the provincial capitals of Sippar Nippur Babylon andBorsippa⁴⁷ provides a sequence of actions through which he generally reorgan-ized local people or land holdings The Annals set this treatment in stark contrastto the devastation laid on the city of Dūr-Yakīn In the case of the capital citiesSargon claims to have broken or ldquodestroyedrdquo their bonds (abātu) freed the peo-ple (lit ldquoallowed them to see the light of dayrdquo note the idiom nūra kullumu withkullumu D = ldquoto showrdquo Š = ldquoto revealrdquo) returned their fields to them (eṭēru) re-turned the territories taken away from them by the Sutians ([w]uttura lt atāruagain lit ldquoincreasedrdquo their domains) reestablished the independence of theiraffiliated cities (šakānu) returned the images of their captured gods and re-stored (ldquoincreasedrdquo) the revenues of these deities ([w]uttura lt atāru) On theother hand the area of Bīt-Yakīn (which included Dūr-Yakīn) he ldquototally dividedrdquo(malmališ zacirczu l 383) as far as the Elamite border After Sargon the scribes ofSennacherib used the concept of dividing (zacirczu) to refer to the distribution ofenemy booty to the military Assyrian governors and leaders of Assyrian culticcentersWhile Esarhaddon used the term when reassigning skilled soldiers char-ioteers shepherds orchard keepers and the like to Assyrian service he also at-tached a greater territorial sense to the term in his claims that he occasionallydivided a particular land ldquoin its entiretyrdquo (si-ḫir-ti-šaacute a reference to its entire cir-cumferenceperimeter) into two parts over which he placed Assyrian officials asgovernors The Chicago Assyrian Dictionaryrsquos rendering of Sargonrsquos use of mal-mališ⁴⁸ suggests the latter tactic over a simple redistribution of spoils andFuchs also understands the term in that way⁴⁹ This practice of splitting an exist-ing political entity and placing the newly defined parts under different moresympathetic leadership anticipates Sennacheribrsquos wholesale transfer of Judahitepolities to Philistine rulers in 701 BCE

Sub-category 35

The two principal terms that record a resettling of captured peoples in a differentcity are the Š-stems of erēbu (ll 161 214 305) and [w]ašābu (eg ll 78 203 216253 381 409 423) ldquoto make enterrdquo and ldquoto make settlerdquo The last reference

Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 169 ll 373ndash78 ARAB II sect 40 CAD M1 170 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 335

162 Ron E Tappy

under erēbu (l 305) relates to the occupancy of Dūr-Ladīni by Sargonrsquos warri-ors⁵⁰ In one instance (uacute-še-šib l 123) the Annals apply the term ašābu to thetransfer of various Arab desert tribes to the former capital city of Samaria

Sub-category 36

Local building projects in subdued cities are usually mentioned by way of theverb naducirc (eg ll 216 219 283) or the phrase ana eššuti ēpuš (epēšu sometimeswritten uacute-še-piš ll 114 305) The terms can appear in connection with a state-ment that Sargon had ldquoconqueredrdquo or ldquocapturedrdquo a certain city (eg note thesequence kašādu hellip epēšu in ll 113ndash 14) but without explicit reference to thephysical destruction of those places The Annals typically employ naducirc to notethe establishment of watch posts along the borders of districts (as in Kammānuin south-central Anatolia just north of Samrsquoal and Carchemish l 216) or prov-inces (Gambūlu in southern Mesopotamia north of Bīt-Yakīn l 283 comparethe situation along the border of the Land of Muški l 219) An alternativeverb for describing the strengthening of border fortresses is danānu as withthe cities along the boundary with Urarṭu (l 218)

Sub-category 37

While this category relates in various ways to the last three sets of terms the fol-lowing words refer more specifically to the administrative takeover and reorgan-ization of foreign cities In fact this section constitutes the aspect of conquestthat the Annals most often address with regard to actions taken within a certaincity As demonstrated in the previous subset building projects that receive men-tion typically relate to the strengthening and fortification of borders the recordsactually say very little about specific inner-city construction projects or the par-ticular uses of buildings the Assyrians themselves may have designed Besidescalling a city by a new name (indicated by the verbs zakāru l 275 nakārull 279 298 or qabucirc l 280 ― ldquoto name change or simply staterdquo) or linking(ldquobindingrdquo) cities together in a larger administrative network (rakāsu l 220)the key term involved here is ṣabātu normally translated ldquoto seizerdquo but in this

On the somewhat awkward wording of ll 304ndash305 in the annalistic record see Peter Du-bovskyacute Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies Reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian Intelligence Servicesand Its Significance for 2 Kings 18ndash 19 (Rome Pontificio Istituto Biblico 2006) 91 n 199


context meaning ldquoto take over for administrative purposesrdquo (or more genericallyldquoto reorganize administrativelyrdquo eg ll 214 215 253 275 297 408 422) Thephrase ana eššūti aṣbat occurs often in the inscriptions of Sargon SennacheribEsarhaddon and Ashurbanipal it typically conveys a new administrative pur-pose behind the control and exploitation of captured towns⁵sup1 Unfortunatelymany older translations obscure this meaning by rendering the phrase simplyas ldquoI builtrebuilt anewrdquo⁵sup2 For example in what appears to represent an unusualturn of events Sargon smashed (ḫepucirc) the provincial capital of Melīdi ldquolike apotrdquo (l 209) while taking over Til-Garimmu a city of lesser status for adminis-trative purposes (l 214) As noted above the typical pattern would reverse thefates of these two locales

Sub-category 38

Finally a few terms occur in this broader category that pertain to the setting ofannual tribute taxes or work assignments Service or more specifically work onlands held by a higher authority (ilkucedilldquostate servicerdquo l 215) as well as vassalage(tupšikku ldquocorveacutee laborrdquo l 215) were imposed (emēdu ll 216 288) on the sub-jects of Sargon Both tax (biltu) and tribute (maddattu) were imposed on thegroups resettled in Samaria ldquoas though they were Assyriansrdquo (ll 16ndash17) ndash aphrase that denotes particularly heavy requirements of tribute⁵sup3 More figurative-ly subjugated peoples must pull (šacircṭu) the rope of Sargonrsquos yoke (abšānu ll 254424)⁵⁴ The Assyrians firmly levied (nadānu or kacircnu ll 277ndash78) annual (šattišam)tribute on their subjects often in the form of interest (a ṣibtu-tax) on cattlesheep and goats (l 288b)

See CAD E 377b CAD Ṣ 16b Cf the appropriate passages in ARAB II sectsect 26 30 33 46 47 Becking The Fall of Samaria 37 n 75 Cf Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon IIPart I Letters from Assyria and the West (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 1987) no 2204ndash5 for the corn tax and for evidence that Samaria sometimes proved delinquent in its paymentof such taxes abšānu a loanword from Sumerian appears only in relation to labor or corveacutee it never de-notes any part of a chariot or other equipment or even routine physical labor (CAD A1 66)

164 Ron E Tappy

Category 4

The fourth type of literary reference in my study sample relates to the direct re-moval by Sargon himself or the indirect receipt by the king of the spoils of warwhich may include people and property The verb that most commonly describesthis action ― šalālu ldquoto carry off plunderrdquo ― occurs at least twenty times in thestudy sample and appears in relation to ldquoSamerina and the entire land of theHouseholdDynasty of Omrirdquo in the Small Summary Inscription from RoomXIV of the palace at Khorsabad (see n 10) The nominal cognate of this root ―šallatu ― also serves as a basic term for the spoils of war (as distinct from mad-dattu ldquotribute paymentrdquo) and it combines with būšu (ldquogoods valuables mova-ble propertyrdquo l 223) to help clarify the intended meaning of šalālu kašādu lequcircetc as acts of plunder not necessarily of destructive violence The Annals some-times record the receipt (using the verb maḫāru) of spoils after stating simplythat Sargon went to battle (alāku ll 128ndash3times 168) or in connection with plunder-ing operations (šalālu l 355ndash2times) or while making post-battle offerings (ll 314316) Less often the record states that Sargon received booty ldquoatafter the defeatrdquoof someone (l 327) and maḫāru is connected with kašādu ldquoto conquerrdquo onlyonce in the sample (l 113) On occasion different series of verbs relate to the re-moval of specific types of goods such as economic or natural resources (egores ― šakālu hellip balālu hellip amāru ll 227ndash32) or military resources (amāru hellipṣabātu hellip [w]ašābu l 279) The conscription of chariots (or charioteers) in the An-nals and the binding together of draft animals employs the term kaṣāru (ll 357411) as at Samaria in Nimrud Prism IV 33ndash34 Sargon considered (lit ldquocount-edrdquo manucirc) these resources as spoils of war along with deportees and apparentcultic images (IV 31ndash3)⁵⁵ At one point (l 408) the official who led the royal armyagainst the provincial capital of Melīdi opened (petucirc) the local treasury (bīt niṣir-ti) and ldquocarried offrdquo the booty to Sargon ([w]abālu compare ll 213 422) Afterreceiving such goods (lit ldquotaking them awayrdquo ekēmu ll 351 387) Sargon storedor heaped them up for his own use (qarānu ~ garānu l 233)

In view of the heavy taxation plundering of military resources and removal of cultic sym-bols imposed on Samaria Hayes and Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samariardquo 178 seem incorrect intheir assertion that during and after the fall of Samaria ldquono special penalties were imposed onthe people and no reference is made to any special booty takenrdquo Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefsat Dur-Sharrukinrdquo 264 has suggested that the upper registers of Slabs 4 and 5 in the Room Vreliefs from Dur-Šarruken actually depict the removal of Samarian booty by Assyrian soldiers


Category 5

Finally and perhaps most significantly for discerning what actually transpired atSamaria the last group of terms in my study sample clearly denotes the physicaldestruction of property in a conquered city Sargonrsquos treatment of uruRapīḫu (Ra-phia) following the battle at Qarqar in 720 BCE provides a prime example of sucha fate This local town was destroyed devastated and burned with fire (ap-pulaq-qur i-na išāti aacuteš-ru-up l 57 lt napālu naqāru and šarāpu) before Sargonclaims to have carried off (aacuteš-lu-la lt šalālu) more than 9000 people alongwith their possessions The Annals make the physical nature of the affrontagainst the city unmistakable

These terms go far beyond the generic sense of ldquoto capturerdquo though they oc-casionally follow and expand that concept in the text For example when the cit-ies of Šuandahul and Durdukka (between the Caspian Sea and Lake Urmia)planned rebellion by prying into affairs in the northern Zagros Mountains ofnorthwestern Iran during Sargonrsquos third palucirc (ll 58ndash67) the king marchedforth (alāku) to conquer (ana kašād) those places Ultimately he smashed (parā-ru) and leveled to the ground (manucirc lit ldquoreckoned them as groundrdquo) and carriedoff (šalālu) their people and possessions Next comes the standard second-levelstatement ldquoThose cities I destroyed (napālu) I devastated (naqāru) I burnedwith fire (ina išāti ašrup lt šarāpu)rdquo⁵⁶ Clearly this triad of terms communicatesmore than mere control subjugation or conquest (kašādu) of a locale Comparethe battle at Dūr-Yakīn in which Sargon besieged the city (lemucirc l 344) thenmassacred and decimated its warriors (ll 344ndash46) pierced the hand of thelocal ruler (l 347) slaughtered various groups of tribesmen (l 349) bespatteredthe citizens with the venom of death (l 350) removed the symbols of indigenouspower (l 351) caused the people to run wild and loose (l 352) plundered andreceived the spoils (ll 353ndash57) completely enclosed (blockaded) the city(l 357) ruined the local economy by cutting down orchards and date palms(l 358) negated the effectiveness of the cityrsquos moat (l 359) and then burnedthe town (this time using the term qamucirc) and demolished (napālu) and devastat-ed (naqāru) its defenses by digging out (nasāḫu) their very foundations The re-sult gave the city the appearance of a denuded mound of ruins after a flood (tīlabūbi l 373) When the loyalty of Mitatti of Zikirtu collapsed during the med-

Annals ll 58ndash65 see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 91 (text) 315 (translation)

166 Ron E Tappy

dling of Šuandahul and Durdukka (see above) Sargon even boasted that heburned Mitattirsquos royal city ― Parda ― with divine fire from the god Gibil (l 132)⁵⁷

Once in the study sample Sargon speaks of the destruction (ḫepucirc l 391a) ofMuški a concept that receives metaphoric clarification earlier in the Annalswhen of Melīdi he records karpāniš aḫpi ldquoI smashed it like a potrdquo (l 209)Like the other verbs in this section ḫepucirc also seems to imply the physical dem-olition of a conquered site Though the Babylonian Chronicle (1i28) once attrib-utes this same action to Shalmaneser V in his campaign against Samaria SargonII never employs this word with regard to the Israelite capital

As expected the devastation suggested by these terms leads to deportationsand the removal of the spoils of war addressed earlier But the emphatic state-ments that incorporate these more drastic actions generally do not proceed byspeaking of an administrative reorganization of the town a rebuilding of phys-ical structures resettlement programs the imposition of taxes etc On the otherhand the passages that do include these types of restructuring measures rarelymove beyond kašādu or lemucirc in describing the initial military side of the pictureIn other words the more extreme level of conquest language gives the impres-sion that the city in question suffered complete devastation with little regardto its future either as an independent municipality or as a functional part ofthe Assyrian Empire This fate was not the case at Samaria

Based on the archaeological reporting from Samaria one might expect tofind clear evidence for this type of conflagration both in the sitersquos depositionalhistory and in the historical texts associated with the cityrsquos final days But infact a coherent destruction level does not emerge from the empirical evidencerecovered there and nowhere in the records of Sargon does the graphic languageof destruction occur in relation to the Israelite capital Only in the BabylonianChronicle where ḫepucirc describes Shalmaneser Vrsquos assault against the city canone identify a possible reference to its physical destruction Judging from thetwo occurrences of this term in the later Annals of Sargon it at least impliesmore than a mere plundering Even so ldquoravagerdquo (a popular translation usedby scholars) remains too vague a term in English to ascertain precisely whatthose who resort to this rendering really envision

From this overview of Sargon IIrsquos language of conquest it becomes clear thathis scribes employed a fairly standard vocabulary to describe the various phases

ldquoAmong the troops of Mitatti of Zikirtu I directed a slaughter I conquered three strong [for-tified] cities together with twenty-four towns in their neighborhood and plundered them Iburned down his royal city Parda with the [fire-god] Gibil and that same fellow [Mitatti] fledwith the inhabitants of his landcountry and their abode was not to be foundrdquo See FuchsDie Inschriften Sargons II 111 (text) 320 (translation) Annals ll 130ndash33


and facets of battle and conquest In fact the terminology outlined here provesquite typical of all Neo-Assyrian conquerors in the late-eighth and seventh cen-turies BCE⁵⁸ Yet Sargonrsquos overall use of this catalogue to relay his actions againstSamaria seems noticeably conservative in scope It also appears from this surveythat the treatment routinely afforded the provincial capitals often differed (forthe better) from that given the regular cities⁵⁹ The physical evidence from Sama-ria corroborates this conclusionWhile the Israelite capital was besieged block-aded() heavily taxed and levied with tribute plundered and repopulated itwas not physically destroyed

4 The Archaeology of Periods VndashVII at SamariaWhat it Does and Does Not Reveal

41 Building Period V (Figs 1ndash2)⁶⁰

The complexities of the depositional history encountered north of the maincourtyard presented the Joint Expedition (Fig 1) with various challenges in ach-ieving a tenable reconstruction of the events attending the Assyrian takeover ofthe site The excavation report indicates that floor levels associated with therooms in this area remained intact only north of Wall 65 Leveling operationsfor a thick layer of ldquochocolate soilrdquo dated to the sixth or fifth century BCEhad subsequently destroyed the Period V and most earlier floors south of Wall65⁶sup1 On the east a large tract of Roman quarrying also encroached on these re-mains as far west as 645˚ E and destroyed at least half of Room kq

Only a few architectural changes occurred between Kenyonrsquos Periods IVndash IVaand V⁶sup2 Besides the subdivision of Pit i the more prominent changes are repre-sented by an entirely new series of well-built rooms to the south and west of thepit (Rooms o h q hq kq and s see Fig 2) These chambers subsumed the south-ern half of former Rooms a-d (of Periods IIIndash IV) overran the disturbed Area eand continued eastward to take in the southern half of Room hkWall 65 whichhad constituted the southern border of an earlier set of chambers (Period IV

See CAD for appropriate parallels See eg Sub-category 34 above though the unusual turn of events at the provincial capitalat Melīdi provides an exception In the following discussion this phase plan relates to both Period V and Period VI (cf SS I107 fig 50) SS III 107 Compare SS I figs 48ndash50

168 Ron E Tappy

Rooms o-h-q) now separated o-h-q-hq-kq from other apparent spaces construct-ed to their south (eg Room s) The excavators maintained in various publica-tions that a considerable deposit of destruction debris overlay even the fewfloors that survived in this area Scrutiny of the available data however failsto validate this assertion

The excavators reported that they recovered only a meager quantity of pot-tery from beneath the Period V house floors In fact the official report presentsan astonishingly limited corpus to represent this important time-span (five jarfragments and three cooking pot rims) Furthermore the report fails to demon-strate a clear correlation between the loci that yielded the published potteryand the area of the summit that revealed the most significant Period V construc-tion activity Five of the eight published fragments derive from two findspots lo-cated in Room hk labeled in the field notes as Segment 125144 and E Strip Be-tween Test Trench 2ndashTest Trench 3⁶sup3 The excavators cut a lateral section through

Fig 1 General plan of the summit Adapted from SS I pl II courtesy of the Palestine Ex-ploration Fund London

Cf SS III 118ndash 19 fig 8 2ndash5 8 In SS III 118 Kenyon also assigned fig 8 1 to Room hk but itappears that this jar came instead from Room hq


the northern half of Room hk and Segment 125144 lay on the western portion ofthis line while E Strip Btw TT2ndashTT3 ran along its eastern side In Segment125144 a rather thick deposit of soil covered the purported Period IV floorand the excavators identified it as Layer IIIe in 125144 (old Room h) and LayerV in Btw TT2ndashTT3 (old Room k) They understood this layer as the only survivingPeriod V surface in the new Room hk

Unpublished field notes however indicate that Layer III actually comprisedldquoone of several levels making up III above IIIbrdquo⁶⁴ These records describe LayerIII generally as a ldquohard yellow levelrdquo that contained examples of ldquohard ringingwaresrdquo which prompted Kenyon to lower the estimated date of the deposit fromher Period IV to Period V Although the matrix of Layer III appears to have beenmore compact than some of the other fills along the northern courtyard andslopes the overall thickness of the deposit (ca 04 m) suggests that it in fact rep-

Fig 2 Phase Plan of Building Periods VndashVII Reproduced from SS I 107 fig 50 courtesy of thePalestine Exploration Fund London

Kathleen Mary Kenyon Fieldbook Qk-l-m Notes from the 1933 Season of Excavation 48a Ken-yonrsquos hand-written unpublished records from the Joint Expedition are now stored at the Pales-tine Exploration Fund in London I am grateful to both Rupert L Chapman III and Felicity Cob-bing who over the years have granted me full access to these important materials

170 Ron E Tappy

resents a densely packed fill not an Israelite surface natural accumulation ofsoil or pure occupational debris left on a surface from either Period IV or V

Kenyon designated the portion of Layer III that actually ran up to the south-ern face of Wall 155 (on the northern side of Room hk) as Layer IIIo TogetherLayers III and IIIo yielded half of the published Period V assemblage⁶⁵ The ce-ramic traditions reflected in two jar fragments⁶⁶ are at home in the mid-to-lateeighth century although they also extend into the seventh century BCE Kenyonherself remarked on the general lateness of the hard thin ware and full light-colored slip exhibited by one of them⁶⁷ Both fragments came from the thickfill of Layer III but because of the secondary nature of this type of matrixthese items can help only to establish the terminus post quem for the depositionof that level Two other fragments⁶⁸ belong to Layer IIIo and reflect ceramic tra-ditions from the late Iron Age II period One of these the purported cooking potrim⁶⁹ finds its best parallel among the late Iron II family of jars⁷⁰ Holladay hasnoted that the holemouth forms represented by the other fragment⁷sup1 with theirwide mouths (32 cm) and thickened slightly molded triangular ledges on theouter rim ldquoare ubiquitous in seventh century depositsrdquo⁷sup2 In short Level III ap-pears to have been put in place sometime in the late eighth or early seventh cen-tury BCE

A doubled-grooved tripled-ridged fragment⁷sup3 emerges as the most typicalseventh-century holemouth rim although the tradition continues into thesixth century BCE This piece came from Layer V in E Strip Btw TT2ndashTT3which Kenyon took to represent a 14-cm-thick floor belonging to Period V Butunpublished field sections show that this deposit deepens into a foundationtrench for a later wall (125b) that replaced or repaired the broken or robbedWall 56 along the southern border of Room hk⁷⁴ Rather than depicting the prin-cipal Period V surface in this room then Layer V may actually represent the bot-

SS III fig 8 2ndash3 5 8 SS III fig 8 2 5 SS III fig 8 5 SS III fig 8 3 8 SS III fig 8 8 SS III fig 12 10 (Period VIII) Kenyon however compared our fragment to SS III figs 11 32(Period VII) and 30 26 (unstratified) SS III fig 8 3 Holladay Ninth and Eighth Century Pottery 131 n 119 SS III fig 8 4 In the late Hellenistic period yet another wall (which the excavators labeled Wall 125a) wasbuilt in this location Kenyon herself acknowledged in her field notes that the phasing of thiswall touched on at least three periods (Kenyon Fieldbook Qk-l-m 10)


tom striations of a subsequent fill and therefore might well postdate Period V al-together

Although the excavation Segment W of 124 also lay near the sequence ofWalls 56ndash 125bndash 125a it extended southward from that point into Room hqand toward the summit not northward into Room hk as the excavation reportsometimes seems to indicate⁷⁵ The local stratigraphy in this area ran alongboth sides of Wall 132 which divided Rooms hq and kq The earliest surviving de-posits in this segment lay east of Wall 132W (Layers VIcndashVIIc) and the construc-tion of the wall cut these levels An elongated bag-shaped jar⁷⁶ however camefrom the deep deposit of fill poured against the western face of 132W (Layer VIII)This type of jar dates in my judgment at least as late as the seventh centuryBCE although its floruit may fall slightly later still The level in which it wasfound can hardly represent a surface of any kind and the fact that the fieldnotes indicate this matrix primarily yielded pottery forms from Periods Indash IV at-tests to the mixed nature of its contents as is characteristic of imported fill lev-els One must therefore lower the terminus post quem (date of deposition) for thissubfloor fill and whatever surface it might have supported to at least the seventhcentury BCE that is to well after the Assyrian conquest of Samaria

Another field section relating to Segment 509126 in Room j reveals threesuccessive floor levels (Layers XI X and IXpaving stones) laid across massivedeposits of construction debris and imported fills (Layers XIIndashXIV) WhileLayer XI reflects Ahabrsquos extension of the courtyard north of Omrirsquos original En-closure Wall 161 comparative stratigraphic analysis shows that the intermediateLayer X corresponds directly to deposits that overran and sealed the remains ofPeriod III Wall 160 (assigned by Kenyon to Jehu) These levels then probablydate to sometime in the early eighth century BCE The packing of Layer IX aroundthe flat paving stones correlates well with surrounding deposits (eg Layer VNorth of TT 2) dating to the second half of the eighth century BCE or possiblyslightly later stillWhile no ivory fragments or burned sooty materials appearedin these deposits Layer IX yielded a short-flanged cooking pot rim⁷⁷ A similarrim⁷⁸ although of the elongated type with a flattened outer face and a deepergroove under the flange came from Layer IX inside Room n farther to theeast again from soil packed around the stone paving Deep fills and multiplerobber trenches characterize the stratigraphy in Room n to the east of Wall

See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 190ndash97 SS III fig 8 1 SS III fig 8 7 SS III fig 8 6

172 Ron E Tappy

561 Certainly then these two fragments do not reflect the latest ceramic tradi-tions associated with the so-called Period V House Their respective styles appearwith subtle variations throughout the tenth and early ninth centuries BCE andHolladay correctly recognized these two specimens as early-ninth-centuryforms⁷⁹ But the deposits that yielded these pieces represent secondary fillsand packing used for laying flagstone floors during a later period They in noway represent a massive conflagration from an assault against the city by anyof the Neo-Assyrian rulers

In sum no stratigraphic or ceramic information gleaned thus far attests to adestruction event of any magnitude that might stem from the activities of Ti-glath-pileser III (either during the years of the Syro-Ephraimite War or in a puta-tive second campaign in 728727 BCE⁸⁰) Shalmaneser V (at any point during hisreign) or even Sargon II (in 720 BCE)Within the amazingly scant ceramic assem-blage the mixture of ninth-century BCE cooking pot rims with jar forms from theseventh century BCE (or later) reveals the secondary nature of the pottery-bear-ing deposits assigned to Period V

42 Building Period VI (Fig 2)

Several basic facts must inform any summary of the layers and materials as-signed to Period VI First only two principal deposits yielded the ceramicgroup assigned to this period Kenyon described one of these as a ldquolevelling con-temporary with Wall 573rdquo ― a feature lying ca 30 m north of the royal com-pound on the middle terrace of the northern slope ― and she identified itstwo pottery-bearing segments as North of 551 and 513514 Pit i reportedly con-tained the second deposit and she labeled the local stratigraphy Segments12212519121 and 12212619121 Second Kenyon remained unable to assign a re-liable date to Wall 573 and held open two tentative alternatives (1) this featurewhich stood just inside the main road that curved around the northern slopesbefore approaching the eastern city gate represented the final defensive struc-ture constructed by the Israelites or (2) the origins of the wall lay in one ofthe early construction projects commissioned by Sargon II after his takeover ofthe city Third Kenyon understood the limited Period V repertoire as indistin-guishable from the collection assigned to Period VI Ultimately therefore sheplaced Wall 573 in Period VI based solely on the claim of a strong ceramic affili-

Holladay Ninth and Eighth Century Pottery 131 As suggested by Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fallrdquo


ation with the latest vessels in Pit i on the summit Fourth Kenyon treated thepottery groups recovered from both contexts as examples of ceramic horizons(homogeneous materials reflecting a rather specific date and often derivingfrom destruction debris) not of ceramic periods (mixed materials that oftencome from imported fills and that show attributes which developed over aspan of time)⁸sup1

According to the official report ldquothe big raising of level contemporary withwall 573 hellip was only cleared in a trench 2 m wide between this wall and thenorthern casemate wall at c 600 Erdquo⁸sup2 A principal excavation segment laynorth of Wall 551 (the massive Greek Fort Wall constructed in the late Hellenisticperiod ca mid-second century BCE) and all but one pottery fragment publishedfrom this area came from this particular locus The field notes record only threemain phases of activity here each with various associated sub-levels early Hel-lenistic (Layers Indash IV) Israelite Period VI (Layer V) and Israelite Period I (LayersVIndashVIII) Kenyon understood the Hellenistic deposits to predate the constructionof Greek Fort Wall 551 and she assigned these levels to the late third or earlysecond century BCE

Kenyonrsquos field notations describe the ldquodeccardquo soil of Layer V⁸sup3 as ldquoPeriod VIfilling running up to 573rdquo⁸⁴ Yet while published Section CD traces this depositonly as far as Robber Trench 578⁸⁵ the field sections reveal that it continuednorthward to Robber Trench 573 as sub-Layer Va and even beyond that pointas sub-Layer Vb⁸⁶ Significantly these field records also reveal that Va lay ldquoinRT 578 sealed by Vd Period VIrdquo and that Vb comprised ldquopart of RT 573(LR [= Late Roman])rdquo⁸⁷ These data alone lead one to expect a very mixed as-

See Holladay Ninth and Eighth Century Pottery 16 n 36 for elaboration of these definitions SS III 119 Although no published section extended this far beyond the Casemate SystemSection CD comes the closest to Wall 573 and reaches as far north (down-slope) as Wall 578which ran almost contiguously to the southern face of 573 (see SS I pl II) Clearance operationsconducted in 1965 by Fawzi Zayadine ldquoSamaria-Sebaste Clearance and Excavations (October1965ndash June 1967)rdquo ADAJ 12 (1967ndash68) 77ndash80 revealed a wall fragment farther to the east (at700˚ndash715˚ E x 498˚ N) which he understood as the eastward extension of Kenyonrsquos Wall 573No stratigraphic connection exists between these two wall segments and in fact Zayadine ul-timately described his so-called Wall c as a ldquolater additionrdquo to 573 He dated the pottery takenfrom the foundation trench of this feature to the late eighth century BCE and noted that thegroup included a rim fragment apparently from an Assyrian-style bowl This layer contributed all but one fragment illustrated in SS III fig 9 Kathleen Mary Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vols Indash II Notes from the 1935 Season of Excavation(unpublished ms in the Palestine Exploration Fund London) Vol II 118a See n 82 above Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 258 fig 51 Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vol II 118a

174 Ron E Tappy

semblage of ceramic traditions from this area Moreover that a number of robbertrenches broke all stratigraphic connections between Wall 573 and SegmentNorth of 551 further compromises the integrity of the overall deposit Most ofthe pottery forms discovered here might easily derive from the earliest decadesof Assyrian hegemony over the city (ie the late-eighth to early-seventh centu-ries BCE) This group includes two bowls⁸⁸ a decanter⁸⁹ a juglet⁹⁰ and two bra-ziers⁹sup1 The fragment of ldquoSamaria Warerdquo⁹sup2 on the other hand may come fromthe period leading up to 732 BCE The mixed series of cooking pot rims⁹sup3 displaysperhaps the longest chronological range since these pieces reflect mainly varia-tions on the flanged-style rims that existed during the ninth and eighth centuriesBCE

The latest pottery in this context of course suggests the turn of the eighthcentury as the earliest possible date of deposition for this deep fill Ceramic par-allels from Megiddo Stratum III support this conclusion⁹⁴ But stratigraphicallyat best this findspot represents a secondary context and a ceramic period not apersuasive horizon Moreover none of the field notes relating to Segment Northof 551 mentioned burned debris or even the scattered presence of charred ivoryfragments That is to say the area produced no evidence of destruction by fire

Unlike North of 551 located down the slope near the northern perimeterroad Segment 513514 lay farther uphill and immediately outside the old IsraeliteCasemate System It too yielded remains from three principal periods of activ-ity R4 (Late Roman period fourth century CE [Layers Indash IV]) the Hellenistic pe-riod (mid-second century BCE [Layers VndashVII]) and disparate deposits assignedto the Israelite period (Periods I and VI [Layers VIIIndash IX]⁹⁵ ldquoMiddenish-lookingdebrisrdquo appeared in Layer II mixed with the natural overburden that coveredthis area Beneath these levels significant quantities of burnt matrix did notemerge until Layer V the massive deposit of fill poured down the slope andagainst the Greek Fort Wall Layer VI included steeply pitched narrow bandsof unconsolidated ldquostreaky sootyrdquo material separated by additional brownishfill This stratigraphic situation does not reflect then an in situ destructionlevel but instead successive rakings of debris from earlier periods down over

SS III fig 9 1 3 SS III fig 9 5 SS III fig 9 7 SS III fig 9 8ndash9 SS III fig 9 2 SS III fig 9 10ndash 18 For specific examples see Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 266ndash76 285ndash94 See Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vol I 69a Vol II 137a


the northern slopes into a secondary context where the debris served as basicleveling material⁹⁶ A complete saucer the only fragment from this area thatdid not come from North of 551 originated in Hellenistic Layer VI⁹⁷

Back inside the Casemate System in a service area lying below the centralsummit plateau Pit i lay near the center of a poorly built cluster of rooms labeledg h j and hk Although Kenyon claimed to have removed the entire assemblagepresented in SS III Fig 101ndash27 from two related layers (VndashVa) located insidethis pit a detailed analysis of the unpublished excavation records reveals a dif-ferent situation⁹⁸ While Segment 12212519121 which yielded the majority offragments took in the pit it also extended southward to the higher rock ofthe central summit and Wall 56125 at the southern boundary of Room hk Sim-ilarly the coordinates 12212619121 included the pit but also the space to itsnorth perhaps as far as the northern perimeter of Room g (Wall 138) wherethe rock continued to decline and greater amounts of fill were required to ach-ieve a suitable construction level⁹⁹

Although Kenyon placed the origin of Pit i in her Period IV she believedthat it continued in use throughout Period V and that its contents reflected theAssyrian destruction of the city in 720 BCE Elsewhere however she acknowl-edged that ldquothe Period VII debris which overlay the floors of the rest of thehouse did not actually overlie the pitrdquo Moreover she interpreted the impressivequantity of pottery contained in the pit as ldquoidentical with that in the filling con-temporary with wall 573rdquosup1⁰⁰ Finally she noted that this assemblage differed (atleast in its significance) from the ldquofew sherds of hellip harder ware including somefragments of water decantersrdquo that she excavated beneath the Period V Housefloorssup1⁰sup1 That the upper courses of the pit stood at least as high in elevationas all the surrounding deposits and ldquoconsiderably above the level of the adjoin-ing roomsrdquo together with Kenyonrsquos acknowledgment that the putative ldquodestruc-tionrdquo remains neither appeared in situ nor sealed nor even partly covered theopen mouth of the pit seem to indicate a functional life for this structure that

In an unpublished paper titled ldquoNote of Levels Samaria Excavations 1931ndash5 Q Area (Sum-mit)rdquo (available in the archives of the PEF in London) Kenyon herself described these deep fillsas ldquomaterial obtained by slicing off the highest deposits of the surrounding areardquo SS III fig 9 1 The daily excavation records show that Layer V and its related sub-depositscomprise a mixture of construction debris and leveling fills and Layer VI is described as ldquoH[el-lenistic] VI Streaky sooty all part of GFW [Greek Fort Wall] filling but also RT [RobberTrench] 541rdquo (Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vol I 69a) Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 296ndash301 341ndash46 The main indicator Wall 126 lay contiguous to the northern face of Wall 138 SS III 119ndash20 SS I 108

176 Ron E Tappy

either survived or postdated both the purported conflagration event and thepost-destruction leveling operation

The materials assigned to Pit i therefore do not appear to have come onlyfrom that specific installation A slight majority of the published pottery(5556) reflects a series of rather late developments in Iron Age II ceramic tra-ditions that is trends that arose or flourished after the Assyrian takeover of Sa-mariasup1⁰sup2 The largest collection of whole or nearly whole vessels (333) howev-er appears to predate the so-called Pax Assyriaca and many of the traditionsmight easily extend as far back as the ninth century BCEsup1⁰sup3 This dichotomy with-in the ldquopit assemblagerdquo clearly militates against the position that ldquono seriousquestion can be raised about the essential homogeneity of the grouprdquosup1⁰⁴ Differ-ences also emerge between the stylish pottery of Pit i and that taken from the fillsaround Wall 573 which yielded a preponderance of thick heavy bowls or brazi-ers and utilitarian cooking pot forms Thus whereas Kenyon equated these twoceramic groups I cannot Actually the Pit i corpus with its examples of hard-fired ware identifiable water decanters etc seems more akin to the few frag-ments recovered from beneath the Period V House floors Yet Kenyon attemptedto divorce these two groups The better-preserved materials came from the areasouth of the pit (Segment 12212519121) while the more fragmentary examplesoriginated to its north and reflected the later phases of ceramic traditions attest-ed by the overall group

Thus a significant portion of the Period VI pottery appears to have derivedfrom leveling debris surrounding Pit i that is from layers that Kenyon includedin her Period VII And since the latest materials in these unconsolidated fillsspan at least the first half of the seventh century BCE the leveling activity itselfmust have occurred sometime during or after that point not in 722ndash21 BCE oreven during the period immediately following Sargonrsquos subjugation of the cityin 720 BCE Multiple seal impressions recovered from the pit originated in Twen-ty-second Dynasty Egyptsup1⁰⁵ and Kenyon herself placed some of them in the lateeighth or seventh century BCE a conclusion that supports a post-Israelite datefor these deposits These seal impressions also suggest a period of peaceful As-syro-Egyptian contact at the site in the years following Israelrsquos loss of political

For whole or nearly whole forms see SS III fig 10 7ndash8 15ndash 17 24ndash25 for the fragmentssee SS III fig 10 9ndash 12 13() 18ndash 19 27 For whole or nearly whole forms see SS III fig 10 1ndash6 21ndash23 for the fragments see SS IIIfig 10 14 20 26 See also Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 345 Table 43 for thespecific segment ― 12212519121 or 12212619121 ― to which each entry in nn 46ndash47 belongs Holladay Ninth and Eighth Century Pottery 68 See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 245ndash46 299


autonomysup1⁰⁶ In short the entire interpretive framework that Kenyon and othershave applied to the principal Period VI loci seems tendentious in nature

43 Building Period VII (Fig 2)sup1⁰⁷

Period VII does not represent a new phase of construction rather it consists inldquoa thick layer of debris with much burnt matter including a considerable quan-tity of burnt ivoryrdquosup1⁰⁸ that supposedly lay over the remains of the Period V rooms(although not Pit i) and stemmed from Assyriarsquos sacking of the site around 720BCE The paltry nature of the Period V pottery repertoire the lack of a strati-graphic connection between Periods V and VI the apparent inaccuracy of fieldrecordings relating to Pit i and the fact that Pit i appears stratigraphicallylater than the Period VII debris pose serious questions for the excavatorsrsquo ar-chaeological and historical interpretations

Four pottery-bearing loci from this period related to a single room or featurewhile three additional segments ran through multiple rooms The total space in-volved in this portion of fieldwork however remained quite limited (120 msup2449˚ndash464˚ N x 638˚ndash646˚ E) owing to substantial disturbances from the Persianthrough Roman periods that impinged on virtually all the surrounding areassup1⁰⁹Yet the excavators published a more diverse ceramic assemblage from the dispa-rate contexts encountered here and nearly 78 of the entire published corpusof ivory fragments came from layers belonging to only two segments in this area(W of 124 and 19511420)sup1sup1⁰

See Graham I Davies Megiddo (Cambridge Lutterworth 1986) 102 104 Since the excavators did not include in the excavation report from the Joint Expedition aseparate phase plan for their Period VII the drawing for Periods VndashVI must serve as ourpoint of reference SS III 97 For example a thick band of sticky chocolate soil deposited during the Persian periodblanketed the entire area south of Wall 65 (see Fig 2) and destroyed ldquoall the latest Israelite de-positsrdquo beneath it Similarly substantial quarrying activities in the Roman period cut through atleast half of Room kq Kenyon noted further that the area covered by the old Room k (= Room hkand the northern half of Rooms hq and kq) was ldquocompletely disturbed by later walls and robbertrenchesrdquo (SS I 110) See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 443ndash95 for a full locational analysis ofthe published ivories and Ron E Tappy ldquoThe Provenance of the Unpublished Ivories from Sa-mariardquo in ldquoI Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Timesrdquo (Ps 782b) Archaeological and HistoricalStudies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday ed Aren M Maeir andPierre de Miroschedji (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2006) 637ndash56 for a similar study of alarge group of unpublished fragments

178 Ron E Tappy

The single-feature segments include 19511420 (Room e) 12212519121 and125144 (Room hk) and 504503509508 (Room l) The heavily disturbed area in-side Room e contributed five fragments from two layers IVa and VIc Layer IVawhich yielded several examples of thin shallow hard-ware bowlssup1sup1sup1 belonged toSegment 19511420 located immediately east of Wall 57 (The excavators labeledthe matrix lying farther away from the wall Layer IVd)While it remains difficultto determine whether or not this deposit actually abutted the wall it clearly over-laid a rather wide cut that appears to represent a robber trench associated withthe partial plundering of Wall 57 The deposition of Layer IVa therefore post-dates the construction use and intentional dismantling of this wall If Wall57 belongs to the final days of Israelite control over Samaria as the excavatorsbelieved the matrix of Layer IVa most likely dates to a later period TogetherLayers IVa and IVd covered two separate pits or drains (both labeled LayerVIc) that yielded examples of a ceramic tradition which differed in many re-spects from the finer bowls of the stratigraphically later Layer IVasup1sup1sup2 Butagain since these pits intruded into levels that were apparently contemporarywith the wall their functional life may have either paralleled or postdatedthat of the wall

Segment 12212519121 lay near the previous area mentioned above but onthe eastern side of Wall 151 in the westernmost portion of Room hkUnfortunate-ly the ancient robbing of walls in this area including at least the partial plun-dering of Wall 151 itself broke the stratigraphic connection between this segmentand 19511420 A short inwardly inclined profiled storage jar rim with ridgednecksup1sup1sup3 from Layer IIIz reflects a ceramic tradition that does not seem to have ex-tended much beyond the eighth century BCE (notwithstanding a close parallelfrom a reportedly sixth-century context at Bethel)sup1sup1⁴ Layer IIIz represents atrench cut by the excavators through the hard matrix of Layer III which they ten-tatively assigned to their post-Israelite Period VIIIsup1sup1⁵ An intact standsup1sup1⁶ camefrom a sooty deposit overlying Layer III in Segment 125144 which also restedwithin the confines of Room hk Although these forms are generally consideredto hold little if any chronological value their overall distribution at Megiddo be-gins in Stratum IV but concentrates in Strata IIIndash II and parallels appear in Ni-

SS III fig 11 12 15 17 SS III fig 11 23 28 SS III fig 11 25 See William Foxwell Albright and James Leon Kelso ldquoThe Excavation of Bethel(1934ndash 1960)rdquo AASOR 39 (1968) pl 67 11 compare also pl 67 1 and p 75 sect 299 n 63 Kenyon Fieldbook Qk-l-m 5a SS III fig 11 35


veau 1 (seventh century) at Tell el-Farah (N)sup1sup1⁷ The stratigraphic context howev-er does not help to refine the dating of the stand since it came from a deposit ofleveling fill that overran Walls 136 and 145 plus portions of Room hk and thatsupported a series of Hellenistic walls resting directly on (and in one instanceset into) the mixed matrix of the fill

Farther to the east Segment 504503509508 lay inside the western half ofRoom l although it may not have actually abutted Wall 142 The excavators pub-lished a small group of five fragmentary vessels from this area including twobowls made of hard-ringing waresup1sup1⁸ and three jar rim fragmentssup1sup1⁹ One of thejars also exhibits a hard thin ware while another represents a holemouthformsup1sup2⁰ that came from Layer Vaz Both field drawings and narratives indicatethat this deposit comprised the backfill in a foundation trench for Wall 508afrom the ldquoR4 Periodrdquo or fourth century CEsup1sup2sup1 All the other pieces came fromlocal Layer Va a backfill poured against another wall (552) during Herodianbuilding operations around 30 BCEsup1sup2sup2 The secondary nature of all these depos-its then reduces the materials published from them to circumstantial evidencethat does not directly reflect a conflagration at the site resulting from an Assyrianattack in the 720s BCE

Three excavation tracts extended through more than one of the rooms on thenorthern side of the summit Segments 12012119126 (Rooms e f g kq) 509126(Rooms f j l) and West of 124 (Rooms hq kq) These areas yielded more thantwo-thirds of the entire ceramic assemblage published in support of Period VIIThe first two segments focus on the irregularly built rooms (e through l) situatednorth of a rock scarp that defined the plateau of the central summit

More than 43 of the entire Period VII pottery group came from Segment12012119126 alone and three quarters of this corpus originated in Room gThe vertical distribution of these items concentrated in Layers VI (nine frag-ments) and VII (five fragments) with Layers V and VIII contributing one sherdeach (Fig 3) The midden-like matrix of Layer VIII lay over patches of a burntplaster floor that rested on or very close to bedrock This 20 cm-thick level con-tained the seventh-century jar rim fragment of hard reddish waresup1sup2sup3 A much

For parallels and a fuller discussion see Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II423ndash25 SS III fig 11 4 6 SS III fig 11 30ndash31 33 SS III fig 11 30 See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 370 fig 62 See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 371ndash72 fig 63 SS III fig 11 27

180 Ron E Tappy

thicker deposit of rubble-filled earth (Layer VII) covered the surviving portion ofVIII The next layer actually consisted of two substantially thicker deposits ofcleaner fill both of which were labeled Layer VI These levels do not reflectthe remains of battle rather they appear to be routine fillings designed toraise or prepare a building level for the following phase of construction For ex-ample the double deposit of Layer VI became the subfloor makeup for the hardyellow-colored clay of the Period VIII surface in Layer V which did not remainintact across the entire area of Room g The repertoire recovered from these com-bined levels dates almost exclusively to the seventh century BCEsup1sup2⁴ Moreoverthe origins of all the published bowls from the earlier Layer VII lie in the seventhcenturysup1sup2⁵ and even the tall-necked jar fragmentsup1sup2⁶ from the debris of Layer VIIIlikely dates no earlier than the seventh century BCE It may in fact represent alocal imitation of a Neo-Assyrian form but with the hard-fired red ware distin-guishing it from the greenish-buff clay often used in the manufacture of true As-

Fig 3 Rooms hq and kq view toward south Reproduced from Kathleen Mary Kenyon FieldbookQk-l-m Notes from the 1933 Season of Excavation 46a courtesy of the Palestine ExplorationFund London

From Layer VI see SS III fig 11 10 18ndash20 32 34 37 for Layer VIw see fig 11 9 The pro-filed jar fragment in fig 11 24 represents the only piece belonging to the eighth century BCE SS III fig 11 1 5 7 14 SS III fig 11 27


syrian vessels If this piece does not represent an intrusive element in Layer VIIIthen the terminus post quem of this and all successive layers belongs in the sev-enth century BCE or later

Segment 509126 reportedly spanned three laterally adjoining chambersRooms f j and l (with Room l actually constituting an open-air space) Threeof the Period VII fragments published from this areasup1sup2⁷ came from Layer IIafthe rubble lying beneath Floor IIa (a level that Kenyon equated with Layer Vin the above-mentioned Segment 12012119126) The field notes describe depositIIa as a ldquofloor sealing IIaf hellip [that] apparently contains H[ellenistic] pottery butthis [is] poss[ibly] a mistakerdquosup1sup2⁸ A single jar rimsup1sup2⁹ came from Layer VIII whichthe excavators correlated with Layer Va of Segment 504503509508 and LayerIIaf mentioned above In keeping with my earlier judgment regarding LayerVa then these deposits reflect a dumping of imported fill against the face ofa much later featuresup1sup3⁰ That some of the ceramic forms contained in this matrixappear to stem from earlier traditions than many of the other Period VII vesselsfurther supports its identification as imported secondary fill with an open termi-nus post quem

Finally Segment West of 124 ran primarily through the westernmost portionof Room kq near the eastern face of Wall 132 (Fig 2) It also however appears tohave included levels lying on the opposite (western) side of 132 in Room hqBoth chambers belong to the better-constructed complex of rooms on the plateauof the central summit just above the rock scarp that dropped down to Rooms fthrough l As noted earlier hardly any of kq survived the heavy Roman quarryingimmediately to the east (Fig 3)

The excavators published a series of five Period VII bowls that came fromthis segment Once again the results of both ceramic and stratigraphic analysesof this area concur with the conclusions reached for other segments One bowlsup1sup3sup1for instance came from Room kq Layer IIIc a mixed deposit of soot and hardyellow matrix situated just beneath the R3 (late second century CE) Wall 124aKenyon herself described this and similar bowls as ldquoall near the seventh centurytype with thickened rim often nearly triangular in sectionrdquosup1sup3sup2 While this formfirst appeared in significant numbers during the late eighth century its floruitoccurred in the seventh and even early-sixth centuries BCE A thin-walled

SS III fig 11 16 21 26 Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vol II 104a SS III fig 11 29 Wall 555 see Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 373 fig 64 SS III fig 11 3 SS III 127

182 Ron E Tappy

bowlsup1sup3sup3 with its flange pushed up and tapered out to a point represents a relat-ed though possibly even later (sixth century) form It derived from Layer Vc apossible floor level in Room kq that ran up to the eastern face of Wall 132Wsup1sup3⁴Although this surface may constitute a reliable late-Israelite locus the ceramicassemblage it yielded again seems quite mixedsup1sup3⁵

The bowlssup1sup3⁶ reflect in my judgment a mixture of traits found in two Assyr-ian traditionsWhile the body forms of these vessels closely resemble the Assyr-ian Palace Ware (or ldquoTable Servicerdquo) motif the rim designs (strongly everted andoften curled out) and especially the ware of the Samaria exemplars find parallelsin the Ring-Based Bowls from Assyria Both items came from Layer VIw that isthat portion of a possible floor (VI) disturbed during the construction of Late Hel-lenistic Wall 133

The very hard thin black ware the shallow exterior ribbing on the uppercarination and the tall flaring upper sidewalls of one piece in particularsup1sup3⁷make it the best candidate for being an authentic Assyrian import It very likelyrepresents an imitation of a metal prototype Moreover its stratigraphic context(in Layer VII) ― between tightly spaced hard-packed surfaces that Kenyon datedto Periods V and VII ― may provide the most reliable findspot of any item pub-lished in connection with this period Yet the floors in question show no signs ofa massive destruction event Furthermore the collective attributes of this bowldo not demand an indisputable date prior to the fall of Israelite Samaria Infact Kenyon herself cited ldquoexact parallelsrdquo from Tell el-Farah (N) Niveau I andTell Jemmehsup1sup3⁸ and ultimately concluded that this innovative pottery entered Sa-maria only during the resettlement programs of Sargon II (programs which ac-cording to more recent research probably did not begin much before 716 BCE)

On the basis of a comparative ceramic analysis alone the chronological dis-tribution of the Period VII assemblage overall appears as follows ca 19 of thegroup could easily date to the eighth century BCE perhaps even before theevents of 722ndash720 BCEsup1sup3⁹ approximately 8 seem slightly later nearer theturn of the centurysup1⁴⁰ but more than 70 of the collection seem at home in

SS III fig 11 8 Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 387 fig 70 Compare the bowl rim in SS III fig 11 8 with Kenyonrsquos statement in Fieldbook Qk-l-m 21athat the overall character of the pottery seemed ldquofairly earlyrdquo SS III fig 11 11 13 SS III fig 11 22 SS III 97 SS III fig 11 16 18 21 24ndash25 29 31 SS III fig 11 19ndash20 35


the heart of the seventh century or even latersup1⁴sup1 More than 68 of the publishedgroup came from Rooms e g and l that is from the smaller more poorly con-structed and often heavily disturbed chambers situated below the rock scarp thatdelineated the central summit plateau Roughly one-third of these forms reflectclear or probable ties to Assyrian traditions though undoubtedly most representonly local imitations of foreign prototypessup1⁴sup2

From a stratigraphic analysis two crucial points clearly emerge First noneof the deposits from which the excavators removed this pottery can date earlierthan the seventh century BCE (with the possible exception of the thin accumu-lation of occupational debris in Layer VII of Segment West of 124) On the lowerend the depositional history germane to the published pottery extends even intothe early Roman period Second none of the stratigraphy that contained the ce-ramic assemblage reflects a coherent in situ destruction levelsup1⁴sup3 that is a whole-sale conflagration that ultimately spread evenly across the entire site as claimedby Kenyon The leveling over of burnt debris and mixed pottery (which generallyshows little to no trace of burning) occurred according to Kenyon ldquosufficientlylong after Sargonrsquos conquest for pottery brought by the newcomers hellip to be lyingaboutrdquosup1⁴⁴ Furthermore a larger problem remains in that the published corpus ofpottery derives not from a single layer ― burnt or not ― but from a wide array ofdisparate deposits that include clean leveling fill the tumble of rubble-filled ma-trix hard-packed floor levels from different cultural phases at least two post-Is-raelite pit fills the backfill of a late foundation trench other late (Hellenistic andRoman) disturbances of various kinds and only a very few pockets of potentiallyprimary occupational debris from any historical period

5 Conclusions

Judging from the evidence reviewed above neither the Assyrian texts nor thearchaeology of Samaria points to a physical destruction of the city near theclose of the third quarter of the eighth century BCE Various factors may offer

From the seventh century see SS III fig 11 1ndash7 9ndash 15 17 22ndash23 26ndash28 30 34 37 for laterperiods see SS III fig 11 8 32 and especially 33 from the Hellenistic period Eg see SS III fig 11 9ndash 15 17() 23 26ndash27 On the other hand the bowl in fig 11 22 thepainted jug in fig 11 28 and the Assyrian bottle in fig 11 34 may represent actual importedpieces The excavators themselves acknowledged that none of the purported destruction debris ap-peared in situ SS I 110 Kenyon Royal Cities of the Old Testament 133

184 Ron E Tappy

at least a partial explanation for this situation For example the early encounterbetween Hoshea and Shalmaneser V recalled by later writers may not have oc-curred inside Israel at all The AEC records that following Tiglath-pileser IIIrsquos ac-tions against Damascus and Israel in 733ndash732 BCE he proceeded ldquoto Shapiyardquo in731sup1⁴⁵ While the assault against the city of Sarrabanu began during this expedi-tion it turned into a protracted siege that extended at least into 729 BCEsup1⁴⁶ andthe Assyrians had apparently not yet subdued Shapiya even by the writing ofSummary Inscription 7 that is not before 729 BCE and perhaps later stillsup1⁴⁷So the arrival in the Shapiya-Sarrabanu region of Hoshearsquos diplomatic corps tooffer Israelrsquos tribute to Assyria may not have transpired until quite some timeafter the traditionally accepted year of 731 BCE much closer to the accessionof Shalmaneser V If the king designate accompanied his father to receive thetribute it seems reasonable to believe that the biblical writers accepted this oc-casion as the earliest real encounter between Shalmaneser V and Hoshea al-though the contact did not occur during a military campaign against Samaria

It also seems to have been common for Assyrian leaders during these yearsto blockade the capital city of a region and to ravage the countryside withoutcapturing or destroying the political center itself Tiglath-pileser III employedthe term esēru for this sometimes unplanned strategysup1⁴⁸ in relation to the Urar-tian capital of Turushpa in 735 BCEsup1⁴⁹ Damascus in 733 BCEsup1⁵⁰ and Shapiya in731 BCEsup1⁵sup1 Similarly Sennacheribrsquos later use of esēru in relation to Jerusalemmay reflect his different approach to that city as compared with Lachishsup1⁵sup2There is no reason to doubt that the intervening Assyrian rulers employed thesame tactic ― one that may help to explain further why we read of various siegesagainst Samaria (the region)sup1⁵sup3 but remain unable to correlate coherent destruc-tion levels from the capital city with the extant textual recordssup1⁵⁴ As indicated

Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 59 Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 161 n 15 Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 154 163 n 23 See above Sub-category 24 and Category 3 with n 40 on the language of conquest Summary Inscription 1 23ndash24 (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 125nn 23ndash24) Annal 23 8rsquondash9rsquo (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 79 n 11) Summary Inscription 723 (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 163 n 23) See Tappy ldquoHistorical and Geographical Notesrdquo See the Palace Door Inscription IV 32 the Small Display Inscription XIV 15 the CylinderInscription l 19 the Bull Inscription l 21 and (for the sheer number of deportees mentioned)the Nimrud Prism iv 31 For destruction levels at Hill Country sites surrounding the city of Samaria see BeckingThe Fall of Samaria 59ndash60 and in greater detail with a balanced appraisal of the extent


earliersup1⁵⁵ I believe that the final form of 2Kgs 174 may preserve an historicalmemory of Shalmaneser Vrsquos having implemented this strategy against the capitalat Samaria Interestingly after Sennacheribrsquos campaigns the term esēru does notappear in the records of Esarhaddon

At any rate the archaeological record of various northern sites around Sa-maria shows a consistent pattern of activity Following the first substantialwave of military engagements throughout the northern valley areas during thedecade of the 730s BCE the Assyrians appear to have delayed regional adminis-trative and building programs until after the final political collapse of Israelitecontrol over the capital in the late 720ssup1⁵⁶ After Stratum V at Hazor even that sitedid not become a substantial citadel under the Assyrians until the time of Stra-tum III with the intervening Stratum IV showing merely a small unfortified set-tlement

Yet once the Assyrians had firmly established control over a particular re-gion and had selected (probably from economic interests) the most strategicsites they wished to rebuild and expandsup1⁵⁷ a much smoother transition betweensuccessive strata appears (eg Megiddo Strata IIIndash II Tell Keisan Levels 5ndash4a4b etc) Ultimately the strategic importance of control over the more insularcapital at Samaria was symbolic in nature ― a signal that everything from po-litical center to outlying economic hubs now belonged to Assyria While a pro-gram to resettle foreign populations in Samaria and elsewhere began or at leastaccelerated during the rule of Sargon II (716 BCE on) the physical refurbishing of

and local impact of Israelite deportations Gary N Knoppers ldquoIn Search of Post-Exilic Israel Sa-maria after the Fall of the Northern Kingdomrdquo in In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel Proceedings of theOxford Old Testament Seminar ed John Day (London TampT Clark 2004) 150ndash80 For a thoroughand systematic archaeological assessment of sites in Galilee Gilead Samaria and Philistia thatare named in either the biblical or Neo-Assyrian texts and of sites that go unmentioned in thesetexts see William G Dever ldquoArchaeology and the Fall of the Northern Kingdom What ReallyHappenedrdquo in Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeology and History of the EasternMediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie White Crawford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jer-usalem The W F Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Israel Exploration Soci-ety 2007) 78ndash92 See above n 29 Compare the transitions at Megiddo from Stratum IVA to III at Talsquoanach from Stratum IV toV at Yoqnelsquoam from Stratum 10 to 9 at Tell Abu Hawām from Stratum III to II at Keisan from theoccupational gap to Level 5 etc Compare Ekron and Gezer for parallels in the south Amihai Mazar ldquoThe Northern Shep-helah in the Iron Age Some Issues in Biblical History and Archaeologyrdquo in Scripture andOther Artifacts Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J King ed Michael D Coo-gan J Cheryl Exum and Lawrence E Stager (Louisville KY Westminster John Knox 1994)247ndash67 esp 260

186 Ron E Tappy

selected provincial centers (eg Megiddo more than Samaria) emerges from thearchaeological record only during the late-eighth and seventh centuries BCEFew traces of such a rebuilding effort have appeared in the depositional historyof Samaria apparently owing to the minimal destruction of the site by the Assyr-ians when they first ldquoconqueredrdquo the city


Norma Franklin

Megiddo and Jezreel Reflected in the DyingEmbers of the Northern Kingdom of Israel

1 The Beginning of the End

In 746 BCE Tiglath-pileser III came to the Assyrian throne as a usurpersup1 His for-eign policy was markedly different to that of his predecessors he enlarged thearea of Assyrian control annexed former client states and converted them intoAssyrian provincessup2 His rule marks the beginning of Assyriarsquos imperial phasesup3and significantly also the beginning of the end of the Kingdom of Israel TheNorthern Kingdom rebelled against Assyrian domination circa 734 BCE ndash anevent heralded by the murder of Pekahiah the son of Menahem and the acces-sion of Pekah to the Israelite throne in 736 BCE⁴ Tiglath-pileser responded to thegeneral unrest in the region by conducting three campaigns⁵ to the west includ-ing at least one against Israel between the years 734 and 732 BCE⁶ This resulted

Stefan Zawadzki ldquoThe Revolt of 746 BC and the Coming of Tiglath-pileser III to the ThronerdquoSAAB 8 (1994) 53ndash54 Karen Radner ldquoRevolts in the Assyrian Empire Succession Wars Rebellions against a FalseKing and Independence Movementsrdquo in Revolts and Resistance in the Ancient Classical Worldand the Near East In the Crucible of Empire ed John J Collins and Joseph G Manning (LeidenBrill 2016) 47 Shigeo Yamada ldquoInscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Chronographic-Literary Styles and theKingrsquos Portraitrdquo Orient 49 (2014) 31 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoForced Participation in Alliances in the Course of the Assyrian Campaignsto the Westrdquo in Ah Assyriahellip Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern HistoriographyPresented to Hayim Tadmor ed Mordechai Cogan and Israel Ephʿal (Jerusalem Magnes Press1991) 92ndash94 Tiglath-pileser conducted his 12th campaign (palucirc) in 734733 BCE along the Levantine Coasttravelling south via Šimirra-Tyre-Akzib-Akko-Dor-Ashkelon-Gaza His 13th campaign was con-ducted from the area of Damascus and southeast of the River Jordan It was only during thefinal 14th campaign that Damascus was captured and the bulk of the Kingdom of Israel con-quered including Gezer Samaria the capital and its immediate hinterland were spared anda new pro-Assyrian king Hoshea installed Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsin 734ndash732 BC Historical Background of Isa 7 2 Kgs 15ndash 16 and 2 Chr 27ndash28rdquo Bib 87 (1990)158 160ndash61 Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Edition with In-troductions Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences and Human-ities 1994) 279ndash82 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaign against Tyre and Israel(734ndash732 BCE)rdquo TA 22 (1995) 271

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-009

in the incorporation of the Kingdom of Israel ndash except for the capital Samariaand its immediate hinterland ndash into the Assyrian Empire The event is briefly re-corded in 2Kgs 1529 and contemporary Assyrian information is provided by Ti-glath-pileser IIIrsquos Summary Inscription which states that Bit-Ḫumria the Assyr-ian name for the Kingdom of Israel had been captured⁷ and gives its newborders⁸ while Tiglath-pileserrsquos Annals describe the destruction and deportationfrom sixteen districts of Bit-Ḫumria⁹ The Kingdom of Israel was in effect nomore its only remnant was the rump state of Samaria ruled by an Assyrianpuppet-king Hosheasup1⁰

This paper focuses on Megiddo and Jezreel the former was transformed intothe provincial capital of Magidducircsup1sup1 while the small settlement of Jezreel becamea frontier sitesup1sup2 on the border between Magidducirc and Samaria

2 Megiddo before Tiglath-pileser III

The Stratum IVsup1sup3 city of Megiddo on the eve of Tiglath-pileserrsquos invasion was anincredible military and commercial enterprise that had been constructed some

Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 9 rev 9rsquo = Hayim Tadmor and ShigeoYamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V(726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) no 49 rev 9rsquo Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 4 6rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada The RoyalInscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 42 6rsquo Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Ann 18 3rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada The RoyalInscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 22 3rsquo and Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser IIIAnn 24 3rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 21 3rsquo cfKyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Deportations of the Israelitesrdquo JBL 117 (1998) 206ndash207 210 Hoshea was an Assyrian vassal placed on the throne by Tiglath-pileser III as recorded inTadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 4 16rsquondash9rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada TheRoyal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 42 16rsquondash9rsquo cf Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fall ofSamaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 478 This is the same policy that he em-ployed some five years earlier (in 738 BCE) when he placed a puppet-king Eni-ilu over the re-duced kingdom of Hamath Narsquoaman ldquoForced Participation in Alliancesrdquo 94 Ariel M Bagg ldquoPalestine under Assyrian Rule A New Look at Assyrian Imperial Policy in theWestrdquo JAOS 133 (2013) 123 For Assyrian frontier zone sites in the west see Yifat Thareani ldquoThe Empire and the lsquoUpperSearsquo Assyrian Control Strategies along the Southern Levantine Coastrdquo BASOR 375 (2016)77ndash 102 ldquoStratum IVrdquo is the name for the stable city used by the team of the Oriental Institute of theUniversity of Chicago (OIC) The name was changed to ldquoStratum IVArdquo following The Hebrew Uni-versity of Jerusalem excavations conducted by Yigael Yadin in the late 1960s ldquoStratum IVrdquo willbe used in this chapter

190 Norma Franklin

fifty years earliersup1⁴ circa 782 BCE during the early reign of Jeroboam II with thetacit agreement and logistical support of Adad-nerari III of Assyria (r 810ndash783BCE)sup1⁵ Its layout was reminiscent of a small-scale Assyrian arsenal an ekalmāšarti used for muster in most major Assyrian cities Although one cannotmake a direct comparison between Megiddo and for example the ekalmāšarti at Nineveh which was the headquarters of the Assyrian armysup1⁶ thereare certain similarities Both were built on a raised platform had two courtyardsand contained stone feeding troughs of similar size

In addition to Megiddorsquos military role its location on the Via Maris the mainhighway linking Assyria with Egypt also indicates that it was an important em-porium Megiddorsquos role as an Assyrian trading post (singular bēt kāri plural bētkarāni) had been established when Israel was a client state under Adad-ner-ari IIIsup1⁷ known to have established at least four new trading cities Whilesome of these trading posts were renamed with the prefix Kār- to designatetheir new role there were also instances when the original city name continuedto be used even by the Assyrianssup1⁸ This appears to be the situation at Megiddowhich is mentioned by its original name in an Assyrian textsup1⁹ in the same linewith cities known to be the seat of a rab kāri ldquoHead of the trading postrdquosup2⁰

Chariots were an essential part of both the Israelite and Assyrian armiesConsequently horses were one of the main traded items in the ancient NearEast particularly large Kushite chariot horses from Egyptsup2sup1 Megiddo was acity specifically constructed to deal with hundreds of horses with two large sta-ble complexes one of which had two identical courtyards (Courtyards 977 and

It has been suggested that the life span of cities in the Iron Age is approximately 50 to 60years Amnon Ben-Tor ldquoHazor and the Chronology of Northern Israel a Reply to Israel Finkel-steinrdquo BASOR 317 (2000) 11 As noted by Israel Finkelstein ldquoDestructions Megiddo as a CaseStudyrdquo in Exploring the Longue Dureacutee Essays in Honor of Lawrence E Stager ed David JSchloen (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2009) 118ndash19 Megiddo Stratum IV (A) was not de-stroyed in 732 BCE See Norma Franklin ldquoEntering the Arena The Megiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo in RethinkingIsrael Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein edOded Lipschits Yuval Gadot and Matthew Adams (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2017) 81ndash 101 Geoffrey Turner ldquoTell Nebi Yūnus The Ekal Māšarti of Ninevehrdquo Iraq 32 (1970) 85 Franklin ldquoMegiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo Shigeo Yamada ldquoKārus on the Frontiers of the Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquo Orient 40 (2005)58ndash62 Fredrick Mario Fales and John Nicholas Postgate Imperial Administration Records Part 2Provincial and Military Administration (Helsinki University of Helsinki Press 1995) no 2 A rab kāri would reside in the kāru Yamada ldquoKārus on the Frontiersrdquo 77ndash81 Deborah O Cantrell The Horsemen of Israel Horses and Chariotry in Monarchic Israel(NinthndashEighth Centuries BCE) (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) 44ndash46

Megiddo and Jezreel Reflected in the Dying Embers 191

1693) designed for chariot horses which were stabled in the city and traded fromitsup2sup2 A large facility such as the one at Megiddo could stable complete chariotsquadrons of twenty and even fifty chariots which is sixty to one hundredand fifty chariot horses at any one timesup2sup3 Located on a major trade route Megid-do would have been an important destination for Assyrian traders in particularfor the royal agents the tamkārū who traveled these trade routes often accom-panied by military personnel in order to obtain whatever the Assyrian kingneeded including horsessup2⁴

This was the city that Tiglath-pileser took over Clearly there was no logic indestroying such a useful trading station and mustering facility in fact therewere many reasons to preserve it intact and maintain its role

3 Megiddo after Tiglath-pileser III

There is no sign of destruction at Megiddo from the time that Tiglath-pileser IIIlaunched his campaign(s) against Israelsup2⁵ Megiddo presents a very different pic-ture to that revealed by the surveys and excavations conducted in the area to thenorth of it which shows that the region of the Upper Galilee was devastated inthe 8th century BCEsup2⁶ Its strategic location and economic potentialsup2⁷ would havemade Megiddo a natural candidate for the usual Assyrian practice of choosing asuitable pre-existing city and providing it with a residence for the governorsup2⁸Thus Megiddo was made the administrative capital of a newly created Assyrianprovince named Magiducirc

Specialized bēt kāri that dealt in the horse trade are known from the central Zagros regionKyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Assyrian Economic Impact on the Southern Levant in the Light ofRecent Studyrdquo IEJ 65 (2015) 184ndash85 n 14 For the various sizes of a chariot squadrons and the number of squadron known to havebeen deployed see Tamaacutes Dezső The Assyrian Army I The Structure of the Neo-AssyrianArmy (Budapest Eoumltvoumls University Press 2012) 136ndash47 Karen Radner ldquoTraders in the Neo-Assyrian Periodrdquo in Trade and Finance in Ancient Meso-potamia ed Jan G Dercksen (Istanbul Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten 1999)101ndash103 n 10 n 12 Contra Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoProvince System and Settlement Pattern in Southern Syria and Pal-estine in the Neo-Assyrian Periodrdquo in Neo-Assyrian Geography ed Mario Liverani (Rome Uni-versita di Roma 1995) 107 contra Younger ldquoDeportations of the Israelitesrdquo 213 Zvi Gal Lower Galilee during the Iron Age (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 1992) See Thareani ldquoEmpire and the lsquoUpper Searsquordquo 79 Karen Radner ldquoThe Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquo in Imperien und Reiche in der Weltgeschichte edMichael Gehler and Robert Rollinger (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2014) 103

192 Norma Franklin

Did this change of status mean that Megiddo was immediately rebuilt or re-designed to reflect its new position as an Assyrian provincial capital Whilethere is no doubt that Megiddo must have undergone some changes the Assyr-ian city of Stratum III evolved very slowlysup2⁹ According to the excavators mostwalls of the buildings of this stratum were built directly on those of StratumIV and there was no intervening accumulation of debris During the life of Stra-tum III buildings were frequently altered sometimes even before completionsup3⁰An analysis of the gradual changes that the city underwent must reflect thechanging role of Megiddo from an Israelite city to an Assyrian provincial capitalfirst as a capital of a frontier province and later as a provincial capital function-ing within the framework of the Assyrian Empire

The earliest modification was the construction of a palace a residence suit-able for the Assyrian governor Two large Assyrian residences Buildings 1052and 1369 were excavated by the Oriental Institute of Chicago (OIC) Building1052sup3sup1 is the earlier of the twosup3sup2 and it is generally thought to be the original res-idencesup3sup3 for the governor while Building 1369 represents a later additionsup3⁴ Thetwo buildings were connected by a suite of rooms consisting of Rooms 510 and511 and a bathroomsup3⁵ The enlargement of the Assyrian governorrsquos palace and theaddition of a bathroom must signify the growing importance of Megiddo and of

Megiddorsquos slow transformation from Stratum IV to Stratum III is in complete contrast to thetotal makeover that the city underwent when Stratum IV was built (see Franklin ldquoMegiddoStables Reconsideredrdquo) Stratum III was calculated by the Oriental Institute of Chicago (OIC)to have lasted some 150 years from circa 780 to 650 BCE If the inception of Stratum III is ad-justed to the period of direct Assyrian rule 734ndash732 BCE Stratum III is still seen to be along-lasting city ca a century which evolved and changed slowly Robert Lamon and Geoffrey M Shipton Megiddo I Seasons of 1925ndash34 Strata IndashV (ChicagoIL University of Chicago Press 1939) 62 Building 1052 appears to be the only Assyrian building that has a regular orthogonal planGordon Loud ldquoAn Architectural Formula for Assyrian Planning Based on the Results of Excava-tion of Khorsabadrdquo RA 33 (1936) 160 noted that at Khorsabad courts in the majority of casestend to approximate a square although often due to having to fit into a city plan not a truesquare Alexander Joffe Eric Cline and Oded Lipschits ldquoArea Hrdquo inMegiddo IIIThe 1992ndash 1996 Sea-sons vol 1 ed Israel Finkelstein David Ussishkin and Baruch Halpern (Tel Aviv Emery andClaire Yass Publications in Archaeology 2000) 160 Contra Ronny Reich ldquoThe Stratigraphic Relationship between Palaces 1369 and 1052 (Stra-tum III) at Megiddordquo BASOR 331 (2003) 39ndash44 Buildings 1052 and 1369 (Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I figs 89 and 101 fig 117) were re-built and adapted a number of times during the long period represented by Strata III and II(Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 69) Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 71


its governor as the empire evolved Interestingly the area in the city that waschosen for the governorrsquos palace was not suitable for sprawling monumentalbuildings It was an area where the ground sloped steeply downsup3⁶ from elevation167 m asl in the south (Grid Square O8sup3⁷) to elevation 153 m asl in the north(Grid Square L8sup3⁸) a drop of ca 17 m over a distance of ca 80 m The large levelarea that formed the Southern Stable Complex would have been eminently suit-able for the large-scale construction required for a palatial building but it wasnot utilized It has been noted previously that the public buildings (ie the sta-ble complexes) were not destroyed when the Assyrians took over Megiddo be-cause they were still in usesup3⁹ and that the transition was a gradual and peacefulone⁴⁰ Therefore I propose that the governorrsquos residence was built on less suit-able sloping ground because the Southern Stable Complex continued to be usedafter the Assyrian takeover Unfortunately the available data regarding theSouthern Stable Complex is not sufficient⁴sup1 to prove conclusively my theory re-garding the longevity of the complex and the resultant location of the palaceHowever the OIC did note that the stables had been used over a long periodof time and that some of the pottery recovered from the floors of the Stratum IVcomplex might actually belong to Stratum III⁴sup2

Finally the Southern Stable Complex was built over and elements from thestables were incorporated into the new domestic buildings For example pillarsand troughs from Stable Unit 1612 were incorporated into the Stratum III Build-ing 14231427⁴sup3 and two of the troughs in Stable Unit 1576 in Square R6 contin-ued to be used in situ in Stratum III Four Assyrian underfloor bathtub burialswere also found in the area of the former Southern Stable Complex and a fifth

Buildings 1052 and 1369 whose foundations resembled a small podium so that their interiorsurfaces could be at a uniform elevation had external stone buttresses to strengthen and stabi-lize them (see Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 70ndash71 figs 81 and 89 Section AndashB) See Norma Franklin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo BASOR 342 (2006) 104 fig 3 See Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I fig 89 Section AndashB Israel Finkelstein and David Ussishkin ldquoArchaeological and Historical Conclusionsrdquo in Me-giddo III 598 Baruch Halpern ldquoCentre and Sentry Megiddorsquos Role in Transit Administration and Traderdquoin Megiddo III 563ndash64 The Northern Stable Complex was discovered first and partially removed The Southern Sta-ble Complex was not removed It was excavated near the end of Philip Langstaffe Orde Guyrsquostenure as director and due to the pressure of work the documentation is less detailed Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 63 Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I fig 72

194 Norma Franklin

was found slightly further north⁴⁴ indicating a new Assyrian-influenced popula-tion Fortunately the longevity of the Northern Stable Complex is better docu-mented⁴⁵ It continued in use during Stratum III Stable Unit 351 was adaptedwith the addition of mud-brick mangers or grain bins⁴⁶ Eventually when thestables were no longer needed their mud-brick superstructure was deliberatelypulled downmdashevident by a thick layer of mud-brick collapse in the aislesmdashinpreparation for the construction of Stratum III⁴⁷ One of the units Stable Unit404 was later incorporated into a Stratum III building⁴⁸

The small domestic area exposed by the Tel Aviv University (TAU) excavationsin their Area H also exhibits an extended period of use TAUrsquos Level H-3 was equa-ted with the OICrsquos Stratum IV (IVA) The area was destroyed by fire but the de-struction was localized with a 60 cm deep collapse containing many restorablevessels⁴⁹ Of particular note was an Assyrian bottle (Vessel 1996H32VS6) re-trieved from Building Unit 8 a small domestic structure immediately below Build-ing 1853 and an open courtyard north of Building 1369⁵⁰ The locally manufacturedbottle is significant for dating the end of Level H-3 and a recent study by Peter VanDer Veen⁵sup1 has confirmed that this particular type of Assyrian bottle known as a

Building 1060 in Sq N9 (Lamon and ShiptonMegiddo I fig 74) had five steps At the lowestlevel there was an Assyrian bathtub It is impossible to determine if this was an underfloor bur-ial (robbed in antiquity) that was not recognized as such on excavation or if the Assyrian bath-tub served as part of an installation in a subterranean room (Lamon and ShiptonMegiddo I 63) For example the lime floor of Stable Unit 407 was reused by Stratum III rooms (452ndash458)signifying that they were built immediately after the unit ceased being used as a stable(Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 74) Stable Unit 364 also continued in use during Stratum IIIand was reconstructed and enlarged during that period (Lamon and Shipton 1939 Megiddo I63ndash4) Stable Unit 351 also continued in use in Stratum III and on excavation the troughswere found to be of mud-brick and rubble construction causing the excavators to surmisethat the original stone troughs had been discarded and the substitution made during the timeof Stratum III (Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 64 and fig 76) Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 65 fig 76 Eric H Cline ldquoArea L (the 1998ndash2000 Seasons)rdquo in Megiddo IV The 1998ndash2002 Seasonsvol 1 ed Israel Finkelstein David Ussishkin and Baruch Halpern (Tel Aviv Emery and ClaireYass Publications in Archaeology 2006) 116 See Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I figs 49 54 and 71 Israel Finkelstein Orna Zimhoni and Adi Kafri ldquoThe Iron Age Pottery Assemblages fromAreas F K and H and Their Stratigraphic and Chronological Implicationsrdquo in Megiddo III 310 That is the Assyrian bottle was found below later additions to Stratum III (see Joffe Clineand Lipschits ldquoArea Hrdquo 160) and may well denote the transition here from Stratum IV to Stra-tum III See the following footnote The author is indebted to Peter Van Der Veen who noted that ldquobased on my own observationson genuine Assyrian Palace Ware from the Assyrian heartland there can be little doubt that theNeo-Assyrian dimpled beakers are a late Assyrian innovation which were only introduced from


Neo-Assyrian dimpled beaker first appeared in Assyria during Sargonrsquos reign andconsequently locally made copies were an even later development

So when did the gradual transition from Stratum IV to Stratum III take placeand over how lengthy a time period The transformation appears to have begunwith the construction of Building 1052 for the newly appointed governor andended when the stable complexes were finally built over and a new city gatewas constructed⁵sup2 It is presumed that whatever small population existed in Me-giddo Stratum IV was deported at the same time that Tiglath-pileser III depopu-lated much of the Galilee⁵sup3 However possibly of greater importance is the ques-tion of when Megiddo was repopulated by the Assyrians The Assyrians broughtin deportees from the east between 716 and 708 BCE⁵⁴ They would have requiredhousing and the proliferation of domestic buildings in Stratum III provides aclue Jennifer Peersmann has argued that Megiddo was repopulated by Sargonsome five years after the final fall of Samaria⁵⁵ Baruch Halpern on the otherhand noted that the Assyrian domestic area appears to be orientated with theeast wing of Building 1369 suggesting that the domestic area was built onlyafter the governorrsquos palace had been extended to include that building⁵⁶ Heproposes therefore that the repopulation of Assyrian Megiddo may havetaken place in the time of Sennacherib or even as late as Esarhaddon Anotherclue is provided by the change already apparent in 709 BCE from chariotry tocavalry⁵⁷ which would have made the chariot stable complexes and the deep-chambered gates obsolete Eventually the Southern Stable Complex became awell-organized domestic area and four Assyrian bathtub burials⁵⁸ providesound evidence for the ethnic origin of at least part of the population Even if

the late 8th century BCE onwards (ie during the Sargonid period) Southern Levantine imita-tions therefore postdate the introduction in the central polity of Assyriardquo (pers comm) Cantrell The Horsemen of Israel 76ndash86 has suggested that the deep chambers of the Stra-tum IV six-chambered city gate were designed to facilitate the harnessing of the chariot teams 2Kgs 1529 mentions the deportation of the residents of both Upper and Lower Galilee IjonAbel-beth-maacah Janoah Kedesh Hazor Gilead and Galilee including the land of NaphtaliNo mention is made of Megiddo or Jezreel Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoPopulation Changes in Palestine Following the Assyrian DeportationsrdquoTA 20 (1993) 109ndash 11 Nadav Narsquoaman and Ran Zadok ldquoSargon IIrsquos Deportations to Israel andPhilistia (716ndash708)rdquo JCS 40 (1988) 42ndash46 Jennifer Peersmann ldquoAssyrian Magiddu The Town Planning of Stratum IIIrdquo in Megiddo III532 Halpern ldquoCentre and Sentryrdquo 568 Stephanie Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-pileser III and Sar-gon IIrdquo Iraq 47 (1985) 37ndash38 A fifth bathtub burial was found slightly northwest of the Assyrian palace buildings

196 Norma Franklin

a firm date is impossible to establish it is evident that the Stratum III domesticquarters evolved slowly starting with the construction of a small governorrsquos pal-ace circa 732 and possibly ending circa 701 BCE The OIC attempted to divideStratum III into IIIB (earlier) and III (later) observing that this simply reflectsthe rebuilding and renovation that took place throughout the period while Stra-tum II is simply a continuation of the preceding phase⁵⁹

4 Jezreel before Tiglath-pileser III

Jezreel⁶⁰ on the eve of Tiglath-pileserrsquos invasion was a military enclosure thathad been constructed at more or less the same time as Megiddo during thereign of Jeroboam II⁶sup1 It too could be classified as an ekal māšarti⁶sup2 albeitmuch smaller than the one at Megiddo however an 8th-century-BCE date for Jez-reel and a correlation with the Stratum IV stable city of Megiddo is not univer-sally accepted so a brief account of the argument will be presented here

The upper tell was excavated in the 1990s but only three preliminary reportsdealing almost exclusively with the Iron Age phases pertinent to this paper werepublished⁶sup3 and no final publication is expected⁶⁴ The excavators uncovered a

Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 62 Jezreel consists of two sites An upper tell Tel Jezreel is located on the summit of a rocky hillthat was continuously inhabited until the middle of the last century A lower tell Tel lsquoEin Jezreelis located by the perennial spring of lsquoEin Jezreel which was inhabited until the late Roman pe-riod Both sites had been plundered throughout the ages for building material and preservationis poor complicating our understanding of the history and archaeology of Jezreel (greater Jez-reel) The area of greater Jezreel was surveyed in 2012 and since 2013 the lower tell has been ex-cavated by a team from the University of Haifa and the University of Evansville led by NormaFranklin and Jennie Ebeling respectively See Norma Franklin ldquoJezreel before and after Jezebelrdquo in Israel in Transition From LateBronze II to Iron IIa (c 1250ndash850 BCE) ed Lester L Grabbe (London TampT Clark 2008) 45ndash53 Aster has pointed out that the enclosure at Jezreel also functioned as an ekal māšarti and tothe fact that Jezreel is referred to in 1Kgs 211 as having a heikal (translated there as palace) theterm is most likely derived from the Akkadian ēkallu which is another reason to recognize Jez-reel as an ekal māšarti a military enclosure See Shawn Zelig Aster ldquoThe Function of the City ofJezreel and the Symbolism of Jezreel in Hosea 1ndash2rdquo JNES 71 (2012) 39 Excavations from 1990 to 1996 were conducted by a joint expedition of Tel Aviv University(TAU) and the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (BSAJ) and directed by David Ussish-kin and John Woodhead respectively A final report was in preparation by the Council for British Research in the Levant but it hasapparently been abandoned


poorly preserved⁶⁵ Iron Age enclosure on the summit of the hill of Tel Jezreel thedate of which has been a controversial subject for the last two decades Despitethe ldquobadly preserved stratardquo⁶⁶ the enclosure was attributed to the 9th centuryBCE the period of the Omride dynasty ldquoon the basis of the limited stratigraphicevidence and in accord with the biblical sourcerdquo⁶⁷ and reaffirmed by David Us-sishkin⁶⁸ This is unfortunate as archaeology in the latter half of 20th centuryshould not have relied on the biblical narrative to determine the chronology ofa site or to establish the date of a particular architectural feature⁶⁹

Only a selection of the Iron Age pottery was published and in the words ofthe late Orna Zimhoni ldquoUnfortunately such an arbitrary collection may omitprecisely the vessels which would enable us to determine the exact date of theassemblagerdquo ⁷⁰ Ceramic parallels for the published material were found in Me-giddo Stratum V (ie VAndash IVB) and Stratum IV (IVA)⁷sup1 which at that time wasdated to the 10thndash9th centuries BCE by Zimhoni Ussishkin and other scholarsThis meant that the published pottery associated with the Jezreel enclosurewas ldquodated generally within the 10th to 9th centuries BCErdquo⁷sup2 Notably following

Preservation was poor due to stone robbing various episodes of destruction and later build-ing from the Iron Age through the Roman-Byzantine period and up to modern times See DavidUssishkin and John Woodhead ldquoExcavations at Tel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993 Second Preliminary Re-portrdquo Levant 26 (1994) 16 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoExcavations at Tel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993rdquo 3 David Ussishkin and John Woodhead ldquoExcavations at Tel Jezreel 1990ndash 1991 PreliminaryReportrdquo TA 19 (1992) 53 David Ussishkin ldquoThe Credibility of the Tel Jezreel Excavations a Rejoinder to Amnon Ben-Torrdquo TA 27 (2000) 248 id ldquoSamaria Jezreel and Megiddo Royal Centers of Omri and Ahabrdquoin Ahab Agonistes the Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty ed Lester L Grabbe (London TampTClark 2007) 301 The original dating of the Megiddo Stratum IV stables serves as an excellent example of howone should not use the biblical narrative as a chronological tool Philip Langstaffe Orde GuyNew Light from Armageddon Second Provisional Report (1927ndash29) on the Excavations at Megiddoin Palestine (Chicago IL University of Chicago Press 1931) 45ndash48 used the verses in 1Kgs915ndash 19 to link Stratum IV to Solomon and to place it the 10th century BCE See Orna Zimhoni ldquoThe Iron Age Pottery from Tel Jezreel ndash an Interim Reportrdquo TA 19 (1992)57ndash58 Zimhonirsquos study focused on the three most common vessel types bowls cooking potsand storage jars similar to her research strategy at Lachish (1990) Sadly she passed away be-fore she could study all the Jezreel pottery Zimhoni ldquoIron Age Pottery from Jezreelrdquo 69 Stratum IVA and certain loci of Stratum IVBcorrespond to Stratum IV the stable city see Franklin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo andead ldquoMegiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo Zimhoni ldquoIron Age Pottery from Jezreelrdquo 69

198 Norma Franklin

Israel Finkelsteinrsquos low chronology correction⁷sup3 and TAUrsquos excavation of the re-maining Stratum IV stable units at Megiddo pottery that was once attributedto the 10th and 9th centuries was down-dated to the 8th century BCE Nonethelessin an attempt to preserve a 9th-century-BCE date for the Jezreel enclosure the Jez-reel pottery was compared by Zimhoni with pottery that she mistakenly pre-sumed belonged to Megiddo Stratum V (VAndash IVB)⁷⁴ Unfortunately the Megiddopottery loci chosen for comparison were contained in the Stratum IV deep con-structional fill below Courtyard 1693⁷⁵ This courtyard is part of the stable city⁷⁶and its constructional fill was laid down when this city was constructed inca 782 BCE This misunderstanding preserved the illusion that the Jezreel enclo-sure was built in the 9th century at the same time as Stratum V (Strata VAndash IVB)

Following criticism on the comparison of the Jezreel enclosure with MegiddoStratum V (ie VAndash IVB⁷⁷) and on the security of the loci that yielded the Jezreelpottery⁷⁸ I analyzed the construction techniques used to build the Jezreel enclo-sure⁷⁹ In brief the enclosure phase at Jezreel and the Stratum IV stable city atMegiddo share similar construction methods that do not appear in the 9th centu-ry BCE namely an artificial podium to create a level plastered surface built-upfoundations mixed ashlar and fieldstone construction the use of strengthening

Israel Finkelstein ldquoThe Archaeology of the United Monarchy An Alternative Viewrdquo Levant27 (1996) 177ndash87 Orna Zimhoni ldquoClues from the Enclosure Fills Pre-Omride Settlement at Tel Jezreelrdquo TA 24(1997) 91 Stratum VA and some loci of IVB belong to the multiphased Stratum V (see FranklinldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo) Gordon Loud the third director of the OIC excavations hadnoted that Stratum V had no less than three phases (Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 7 n 4) Zimhoni thought that the pottery was from the floors of the pillared buildings eg Building1706 in Square Q10 sealed below Courtyard 1693 However although the pillared buildings be-longed to a late phase of Stratum V (Franklin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo 107 FranklinldquoMegiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo 94ndash5 Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 3ndash5 figs 5 and 8) thepottery reanalyzed by Zimhoni was contained within the Stratum IV constructional fill that bur-ied the Stratum V pillared buildings The fill would have been brought in from elsewhere on thesite and therefore the pottery contained in it cannot be used to achieve a secure date Unfortu-nately further confusion was provided by the fact that the Stratum IV fill below Courtyard 1693was registered as Locus -1693 (minus 1693) of Stratum V while the constructional fill below theidentical adjacent courtyard Courtyard 977 was registered as Locus 1674 of Stratum IV (Frank-lin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo 99) Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 17 figs 34 43 Anabel Zarzecki-Peleg Yadinrsquos Expedition toMegiddo Final Report of the Archaeological Excavations (1960 1966 1967 and 19712 Seasons)(Jerusalem Publications of the Institute of Archaeology 2016) 104 209ndash 10 Franklin ldquoMegiddoStables Reconsideredrdquo 94ndash95 Zarzecki-Peleg Yadinrsquos Expedition to Megiddo 286 Ben-Tor ldquoHazor and Chronologyrdquo Franklin ldquoBefore and after Jezebelrdquo


ashlar piers and marginal drafting Collectively these are all 8th century BCEbuilding techniques⁸⁰ which means that the enclosure phase at Jezreel datesto the 8th century and as correctly noted by Ussishkin and John Woodhead func-tioned as a military base⁸sup1

Jezreelrsquos role was to protect the principal route to the capital Samaria Locat-ed at the junction of the Via Maris and the Ridge Route the local highway run-ning south to the capital Samaria Jezreel was also situated at the narrowestpoint of the Jezreel Valley opposite the village of Shunem⁸sup2 Together thesetwo sites formed a bottleneck that controlled the route west to the LevantineCoast Thus during the apogee of the Northern Kingdom when the enemymdashwhether Aramean or Assyrianmdashwas located to the northeast Jezreel had an im-portant military function helping to protect the trade route to the coast and serv-ing as an ekal māšarti an arsenal and mustering station for the Israelite capital

5 Jezreel after Tiglath-pileser III

After 732 Jezreelrsquos important role as the gatekeeper of Samaria was no longer rel-evant but it still had a function albeit a much diminished one and the site wasnot destroyed⁸sup3 The only destruction observed was a localized layer of burnt de-bris contained within the foundations of the enclosurersquos southeastern tower⁸⁴The pottery-rich debris from the tower Locus 214 contained material that hadcollapsed into the basement from the towerrsquos upper story⁸⁵ Among it was alarge group of restorable storage jars⁸⁶ one of which is of particular interest⁸⁷this vessel has close parallels in the southern Coastal Plain and Judah⁸⁸ and is

Franklin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo 108 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993rdquo 47 David Ussishkin and John WoodheadldquoExcavations at Tel Jezreel 1994ndash1996 Third Preliminary Reportrdquo TA 24 (1997) 70 Shunem of 2Kgs 4 known today as Sulam Jezreel is mentioned in Hos 14ndash5 22 24 in reference to a historical event Although there isno agreement as to which specific event is referenced it is clearly a military and political one (orpossibly more than one) See Aster ldquoFunction of Jezreelrdquo 33ndash34 This localized destruction has often been interpreted incorrectly as the destruction of the en-tire enclosure however the enclosure was not destroyed and the excavators never claimed thatit was see Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1992ndash1993rdquo 46 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993rdquo 25ndash28 Zimhoni ldquoClues from Enclosure Fillsrdquo figs 10ndash11 Zimhoni ldquoClues from Enclosure Fillsrdquo fig 11 5 Orna Zimhoni ldquoTwo Ceramic Assemblages from Lachish Levels III and IIrdquo TA 17 (1990)27ndash29 fig 17 3 Group IIIE

200 Norma Franklin

best known from contexts dating to the late 8th and 7th centuries BCE⁸⁹ Evidencefor 8th-century and later settlement was found across the site but unfortunatelythere were no secure loci One example is the thick-rimmed cooking pots thatwere found in all excavated areas⁹⁰ The base of a wedge-shaped decoratedbowl found unstratified in Area D (Fig 9 3) suggests a 7thndash6th-centuries-BCE set-tlement⁹sup1 Lastly a late Iron Age red-slipped ring-based carinated bowl wheel-burnished on the inside (Reg No 15538) was found intact in Sq T50 it imitatesan Assyrian bronze bowl⁹sup2 Further evidence for an 8thndash6th-century-BCE settle-ment at Jezreel was provided by the small finds They include two ceramichorse heads that date to the 8thndash7th centuries BCE⁹sup3 and three weights (one hem-atite and two limestone) that compare with similar weights found in MegiddoStratum III or II⁹⁴ A fragment of a stone-carved incense bowl was also comparedwith examples from Megiddo Stratum III or II⁹⁵ The Megiddo examples werepublished by Herbert May⁹⁶ and dated to the 7th and 8th centuries BCE A nearlycomplete stone cosmetic palette was dated to between the 8th and 6th centuriesBCE and has parallels from Megiddo Strata I to III⁹⁷ Four late Iron Age burialswere excavated three of which were very close together Cists G1239 and G1260and Assyrian bathtub Burial G2000⁹⁸ Grave 1260 contained burial goods analabaster palette dated to the 7th century BCE a bronze mirror dating possiblyto the Persian period and a bronze bowl⁹⁹ Lastly two LMLK stamped jar han-dlessup1⁰⁰ provide evidence for activity ca 701 BCEsup1⁰sup1 In short the excavators docu-mented 8thndash7th centuries BCE Iron Age material remains in all the excavated

Zimhoni ldquoClues from Enclosure Fillsrdquo 100 Zimhoni ldquoIron Age Pottery from Jezreelrdquo 68 fig 9 1ndash2 Zimhoni ldquoIron Age Pottery from Jezreelrdquo 68 Zimhoni ldquoClues from Enclosure Fillsrdquo 108 fig 15 2 Raz Kletter ldquoClay Figurines and Scale Weights from Tel Jezreelrdquo TA 24 (1997) 110 Kletter ldquoClay Figurinesrdquo 117 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993rdquo 40ndash 1 fig 56 Herbert May Material Remains of the Megiddo Cult (Chicago IL University of Chicago Press1935) 19 pl 18 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1994ndash1996rdquo 66ndash67 fig 56 Lamon and Shipton Me-giddo I pls 108ndash 11 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1994ndash1996rdquo 32ndash40 figs 20 22ndash23 26 31ndash34 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1994ndash1996rdquo 33ndash36 figs 27ndash30 The first was a surface find and was held by a local collector in Kibbutz Beit Alfa (informa-tion curtesy of Gabriel Barkay) The second a mmšt stamp was found in a salvage excavationsee Ora Yogev ldquoTel Yizreel 19871988rdquo Hadashot Arkheologiyot ndash Excavations and Surveys in Is-rael 92ndash93 (19881989) 192 fig 160 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1990ndash 1991rdquo 10 and Gabriel Barkay pers comm


squares that they presumed postdated the enclosuresup1⁰sup2 yet there were no smallfinds that they could attribute to a 9th century BCE enclosure

Finally eight iron arrowheads were retrieved from Areas A and F and in thewords of the excavators ldquofour or five of the iron arrowheads were found in a con-text likely associated with the Iron Age enclosurerdquo They went on to state thatldquothe discovery of iron arrowheads in the context of the enclosure is an importantdatum indicating the use of arrowheads in Palestine in the middle of the 9th cen-tury BCErdquosup1⁰sup3 However more recent research conducted by Yulia Gottlieb hasconclusively shown that iron arrowheads did not become common before theend of the 9th century BCEsup1⁰⁴ In addition according to Gottlieb only two ofthe Jezreel arrowheads can be dated with any certainty specifically the two re-trieved from debris in an installation (L154) near the enclosurersquos gatehouseand they cannot be earlier than the 8th century BCEsup1⁰⁵

An Excursus the Communication Network

Once the Assyrians had annexed a region it was linked to the imperial informa-tion network by a system of roadssup1⁰⁶ known as the hūl šarrisup1⁰⁷ the Kingrsquos Road orthe Royal Road This was a high-speed communications network essential to en-sure efficient Assyrian administration Sections of the hūl šarri were maintained

Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1994ndash1996rdquo 32 Ibid 64ndash66 fig 55 This is an unfortunate example of circular reasoning ie the date ofthe enclosure was dated based on biblical evidence to the 9th century and the first appearanceof iron arrowheads was therefore pushed back to the 9th century though no examples appearedelsewhere earlier than the 8th century Yulia Gottlieb ldquoBeer-Sheba under Attack a Study of Arrowheads and the Story of Destruc-tion of the Iron Age Settlementrdquo in Beer-Sheba III the Early Iron IIA Enclosed Settlement and theLate Iron IIAndashIron IIB Cities ed Zersquoev Herzog and Lily Singer-Avitz (Tel Aviv Emery and ClaireYass Publications in Archaeology 2016) 1193 Yulia Gottlieb pers comm Radner ldquoThe Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquo 103While there are no Assyrian documents that men-tion the actual road system much can be gleaned from Assyrian state letters see Karen RadnerldquoAn Imperial Communication Network The State Correspondence of the Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquoin State Correspondence in the Ancient World From New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire edKaren Radner (Oxford Oxford University Press 2014) 64 Karen Radner ldquoRoyal Pen Pals the Kings of Assyria in Correspondence with Officials Cli-ents and Total Strangers (8th and 7th Centuries BC)rdquo in Official Epistolography and the Language(s) of Power Proceedings of the First International Conference of the Research Network Imperiumand Officium ed Stephan Prochaacutezka Lucian Reinfandt and Sven Tost (Vienna Austrian Acad-emy of Sciences Press 2015) 63

202 Norma Franklin

by the relevant Assyrian provincial governorsup1⁰⁸ as they were vital for both ad-ministrative and military matterssup1⁰⁹

Also in these newly conquered regionssup1sup1⁰ forts that served as outposts for anAssyrian garrison were established They functioned as military centers and in-formation hubssup1sup1sup1 In this way Assyria was connected via a network of fortressesto the outlying areas facilitating the passage of messengers armies and militarysupplies needed to control the provinces and convey revenue back to the heart-landsup1sup1sup2 The hūl šarri was divided into stages (Ass mardētu) and staging-posts(Ass bēt mardēti plural bēt mardiāte) which were set up at strategic locationsespecially at intersectionssup1sup1sup3 These bēt mardiāte were reserved solely for Assyr-ian usesup1sup1⁴ and were maintained by the local Assyrian governor The term mardē-tu may refer to a strategic location along the route such as an important inter-section rather than indicate the existence of an actual bēt mardētisup1sup1⁵ In anycase it is unlikely that all bēt mardiāte were of a uniform layout or size Ratherthe appellation and function of the different stations must have been determinedby their location within the empire and by the jurisdiction they were under mdash ofa provincial governor or the Assyrian capitalsup1sup1⁶

Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 68 71 Karlheinz Kessler ldquolsquoRoyal Roadsrsquo and Other Questions of the Neo-Assyrian CommunicationSystemrdquo in Assyria 1995 Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian TextCorpus Project ed Simo Parpola and Robert M Whiting (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text CorpusProject 1997) 129 Although the Assyrian administrative letters that are available to us today deal almost ex-clusively with the Assyrian frontier region in the east eg Urartu similar correspondence musthave once existed in the west Bradley J Parker ldquoGarrisoning the Empire Aspects of the Construction and Maintenance ofForts on the Assyrian Frontierrdquo Iraq 59 (1997) 77 Fredrick Mario Fales ldquoPalatial Economy in Neo-Assyrian Documentation An Overviewrdquo inPalatial Economy in the Ancient Near East and in the Aegean First Steps towards a Comprehen-sive Study and Analysis ed Pierre Carlier Francis Joannegraves Franccediloise Rougemont and Julien Zur-bach (Pisa Serra 2017) 273 A communication system was probably set up as early as the daysof Shalmaneser III (858ndash824 BCE) see Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 71 but theearliest reference dates to Adad-nerari IIIrsquos time Fales and Postgate Imperial Administration Re-cords Part 2 no 1 9 16 no 2 rev 5 see Kessler ldquoRoyal Roadsrdquo 130 Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 Radner ldquoRoyal Pen Palsrdquo 63 See Kessler ldquoRoyal Roadsrdquo 134 it has also been suggested that the term mardētu denotesthe distance between stages that could be ridden in one day Natalie Naomi May ldquoAdministra-tive and Other Reforms of Sargon II and Tiglath-pileser IIIrdquo SAAB 21 (2015) 95 Kessler ldquoRoyal Roadsrdquo 135


Radner has previously noted that no bēt mardēti has been recognized inthe archaeological recordsup1sup1⁷ however Aster has recently identified one nearTel Hadidsup1sup1⁸ a site located on the direct route to Gezersup1sup1⁹ Although Aster men-tions forts designed for muster and for specifically provisioning the army enroute to a campaign he describes some of these staging posts as Assyrian ad-ministrative centers with specific characteristics including agricultural installa-tionssup1sup2⁰ Karen Radner notes that the bēt mardiāte often located in pre-existingsettlements needed to have the necessary agricultural infrastructure required tosupport the Assyrian envoys and transport animalssup1sup2sup1 Therefore an importantprerequisite of a bēt mardēti would be a small but permanent civilian populationto cultivate the land in order to provide provisionssup1sup2sup2

6 The Role of Megiddo under Assyrian Rule

It is very probable that prior to the invasion of Tiglath-pileser III the Israelite cha-riot units were based at strategically located Megiddo rather than at Samariasup1sup2sup3which was buried deep in the mountainous heartland of ancient Israel Further-more following Tiglath-pileserrsquos invasion it is questionable if Hoshea was al-lowed to keep more than a token chariot force at Samaria Israelite chariotsdo not appear on the Khorsabad reliefs depicting Sargonrsquos defeat of Samariaonly the Assyrian chariots are shownsup1sup2⁴ That is by the time that Samaria fellthe major part of the Israelite chariot force may have been under Assyrian ruleat Megiddo for more than a decade It is recorded that following Sargonrsquos finaldefeat of Samaria he incorporated an Israelite team of fifty chariotssup1sup2⁵ including

Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 Shawn Zelig Aster ldquoAn Assyrian bīt mardite Near Tel Hadidrdquo JNES 74 (2017) 281 Aster ldquoAn Assyrian bīt marditerdquo 288 Aster ldquoAn Assyrian bīt marditerdquo 282ndash84 Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 This is deduced from Asterrsquos reading of two cuneiform tablets found at Tel Hadid whichtestify to the presence of deportees (and whose task may have been to maintain the bēt mardēti)Aster ldquoAn Assyrian bīt marditerdquo 287 There is no evidence for the availability of stables or chariot facilities at Samaria althoughonly the acropolis has been excavated and any stable complexes must have been in the lowercity Norman Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukin and Sargon IIrsquos Western Cam-paignsrdquo TA 21 (1994) 270 fig 8 Cf Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume Note that a team of fifty chariots is unlikely to repre-sent the full strength of the Israelite chariotry in 732 BCE

204 Norma Franklin

thirteen equestrians whose title was rab uracircte (team commander) into the Assyr-ian army as a distinct Samarian unit Stephanie Dalley pointed to the ambiguityregarding whether the chariot teams were deported or deployed locally but re-jected the idea of local deploymentsup1sup2⁶ She did suggest however that the Israel-ite chariot teams were so professional that they could change allegiance as longas they would continue to employ their professional skillssup1sup2⁷ The Samarian teamof fifty chariots based in the capital would have been an elite unit and so themention of their redeployment by Sargon would have warranted a mention in theAssyrian annals On the other hand that Tiglath-pileser III must have comman-deered the bulk of the Israelite chariot force when he captured Megiddo was ap-parently either considered not noteworthy or a relevant inscription did not sur-vive

Megiddo was not just the provincial capital of a newly created Assyrian prov-ince It was also a military stronghold an inferior version of an ekal māšarti lo-cated on the hūl šarri In an analysis of the Assyrian presence in the Upper Tigrisregion Parker shows that the Assyrians used similar strongholds located on theperiphery to launch military strikes and as supply depots enabling thesestrikessup1sup2⁸ These peripheral strongholds were important communication centersfor military matters and for the procurement of supplies including horsessup1sup2⁹From the time of Tiglath-pileser III the Assyrian militaryrsquos requirement for horsescould not be met solely by tribute a royal horse agent (Ass tamkār sisē) was em-ployed to purchase horses for the Assyrian armysup1sup3⁰ The horse training and trad-ing center at Megiddo was designed to deal with hundreds of horses at a timetraining and selling them mdash not just as a chariot team of two or three horses butas complete chariot squadrons of twenty or fifty chariotssup1sup3sup1 Megiddorsquos role thuscontinued as an established bēt kāri that specialized in the training and tradingof horses Similar specialized Assyrian trading posts are known from the centralZagros regionsup1sup3sup2 A bēt kāri was originally established in Gaza by Tiglath-pileserIII when he conquered the city in 734 BCEsup1sup3sup3 and Megiddorsquos location on the hūl

Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalryrdquo 34ndash36 Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalryrdquo 39 Bradley J Parker The Mechanics of Empire The Northern Frontier of Assyria as a Case Studyin Imperial Dynamics (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001) 265 Parker ldquoGarrisoning the Empirerdquo 79 Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalryrdquo 31 44ndash47 See Franklin ldquoMegiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo Younger ldquoAssyrian Economic Impactrdquo 184ndash85 n 14 Yamada ldquoKārus on the Frontiersrdquo 64 69


šarri which was also an important Assyrian trade routesup1sup3⁴ would have contin-ued Megiddo would have also been an invaluable asset to the Assyrianseven after Tiglath-pileser III particularly during the campaigns to the west ofShalmaneser V and Sargon II In fact even after Sargonrsquos final annihilation ofSamaria his re-establishment of dominion over the Philistine coast and theopening up of the Gaza trading post the kāru of Egypt Megiddorsquos dual functionas a specialized bēt kāri and as a military stronghold was still relevant PossiblyMegiddo was still used as a mustering station by Sennacherib as late as 701 BCEbut with relative quiet in the west and the Assyrian policy of population transfernew domestic quarters eventually replaced the stables Cavalry forces took overfrom the chariot units and at Megiddo the stable complexes and the chamberedgates became obsolete and the full blown orthogonal planned city of StratumIII arose

7 The Role of Jezreel under Assyrian Rule

Jezreel located on the border with the rump state of Samaria would have playeda crucial role under Tiglath-pileser III by controlling access to and from SamariaThat is Jezreel once the gatekeeper that protected Samaria had changed sides

The Assyrian army travelled vast distances and there are various scenes onthe Neo-Assyrian reliefs that depict the army camped and victualled en routeto or at a battle sitesup1sup3⁵ On average the Assyrian army could cover twenty-two kilometers per day if it was marching with no battles plundering or foragingon the waysup1sup3⁶ Camps were set up in strategic locations often at a crossroad butalways where there was pasturage for the horsessup1sup3⁷ In unstable areas usually onthe fringes of the empire a permanent camp (Ass birtu plural birāti) would beerectedsup1sup3⁸ These military outposts were sometimes left abandoned but withtheir walls intact ready to be reused if necessary This way a temporary campcould be set up within a fortified areasup1sup3⁹ The camp could be oval rectangular

These routes were vital for trade with Egypt Younger ldquoAssyrian Economic Impactrdquo182ndash84 n 9 Fredrick Mario Fales and Monica Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practices in Assyrian Mili-tary Encampmentsrdquo in Paleonutrition and Food Practices in the Ancient Near East Towards aMultidisciplinary Approach ed Lucio Milano (Padova sargon 2014) 414 Younger ldquoFall of Samariardquo 472 Fales and Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practicesrdquo 415 Fales and Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practicesrdquo 414 Fales and Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practicesrdquo 417

206 Norma Franklin

or even square in plan with a defensive wallsup1⁴⁰ Jezreel a border site on the fringeof the empire located at the intersection of the Via Maris a major hūl šarri withthe road to Samaria made it a perfect location for an Assyrian border outpost abirtu

Following the fall of Samaria Jezreelrsquos role as an Assyrian border outpostwas no longer relevant however just as the bēt mardēti at Tel Hadid was onthe direct route to Gezersup1⁴sup1 so Jezreel was on the direct route to Megiddo andon to the kāru of Gaza Jezreel would have been an obvious choice to be trans-formedsup1⁴sup2 into a bēt mardēti Located on the international highway in an areaof agricultural fecundity Jezreel could support a small but necessary civilianpopulation to produce and process the grain and wine required to provisionthe Assyrian army A large winery complexsup1⁴sup3 and the ca one hundred rock-cut underground storage pits sup1⁴⁴ dotted over the summit of Jezreel attest to itsagricultural nature and suitability as a bēt mardētisup1⁴⁵ This change of functionis reflected in Hos 224sup1⁴⁶ ldquoAnd the earth will produce grain and wine andoil and they will cause Jezreel to producerdquo ( שוריתה־תאוןגדה־תאהנעתץראהו

לאערזי־תאונעיםהורהציה־תאו )sup1⁴⁷ A bēt mardēti had no need for large stable com-plexessup1⁴⁸ although it was responsible for the fast envoy system (Ass kalliu)which necessitated that a fresh pair of mules be available at each stationsup1⁴⁹They did not need a fancy stable

Fales and Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practicesrdquo 415ndash 16 ldquoAssyrian bīt marditerdquo 288 Aster ldquoFunction of Jezreelrdquo 41 argues that Hos 12bndash25 contains a vision regarding Jezreelchanging its role that is Jezreel is transformed from a military compound to an agricultural cen-ter Although this is interpreted as a vision of Hosea (Aster ldquoFunction of Jezreelrdquo 45) it was infact a reality Hosea the only Northern Kingdom prophet portrays the Northern Kingdom at thetime of king Hoshea cf Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Source for the Last Days of theKingdom of Israelrdquo BZ 59 (2015) 233ndash34 236 Norma Franklin Jennie Ebeling and Philippe Guillaume ldquoAn Ancient Winery in JezreelrdquoBeit Mikra 60 (2015) 9ndash18 (in Hebrew) Jennie Ebeling Norma Franklin and Philippe Guil-laume ldquoThe Jezreel Wineryrdquo (forthcoming) Norma Franklin ldquoExploring the Function of Bell Shaped Pits With a View to Iron Age Jez-reelrdquo in Lawrence Stager Volume (Eretz-Israel in press) 76ndash82 See Aster ldquoAssyrian bīt marditerdquo 287 Hos 224 in the Hebrew or 222 in KJV and other versions See Aster ldquoFunction of Jezreelrdquo 36 Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 Radner ldquoRoyal Pen Palsrdquo 64



Neither Megiddo nor Jezreel were destroyed by Tiglath-pileser III in 732 BCE Infact the opposite is true both sites were of use to the Assyrians as they expand-ed and controlled their empire in the west

Megiddorsquos dual role as a regional ekal māšarti and as a bēt kāri specializingin the trade of trained chariot horses would have been an invaluable asset Ti-glath-pileser III chose Megiddo as the capital of the newly founded frontier prov-ince of Magidducirc Only following the final defeat of Samaria by Sargon II did Me-giddo become a fully-fledged provincial capital however this did not happenovernight It was only with the change from chariotry to cavalry that the stableswere dismantled and Megiddo rebuilt to house a new population of Assyrian de-portees

Jezreelrsquos role as a strategic fortified site a minor ekal māšarti and musteringstation that protected the Israelite capital changed under Tiglath-pileser III tocontrolling the passage to Samaria Located on the very fringe of the empirein an unstable area it could have served as a permanent camp a birtu forthe Assyrians Following the fall of Samaria Jezreelrsquos location on a majortrade route a hūl šarri together with its agricultural potential made it eminentlysuited to be turned into a bēt mardēti and continue to serve its Assyrian mastersin a new way

208 Norma Franklin

Part IV Working with the Book of Kingsthe Text

Timo Tekoniemisup1

Between Two Differing Editions SomeNotable Text-Critical Variants in 2 Kings 17

1 Introduction

The chapter 2Kgs 17 is a well-known playfield (or minefield) for all sorts of liter-ary and redaction critical theories The first six verses of the chapter even containsome of the most challenging historical puzzles in the Book of Kings as seen inthe many contributions of this volume While the historical and literary criticalreconstructions have dominated the scholarly discussion surprisingly little inter-est has been given to the text-critical challenges of the chapter On the basis ofsome recently published commentaries on 2Kings one could even come to theconclusion that there are no notable text-critical variants in the chapter

Based on Alfred Rahlfsrsquo widely used ldquosemi-criticalrdquo edition of the Septuagintthis would indeed seem to be the case the majority text of Septuagint 2Kings(ldquo4 Reignsrdquo) agrees with the Masoretic text (MT) almost completely Howeverthis happens for a good reason the majority of Greek witnesses attest to theso-called kaige revision which harmonized the Greek text towards that of(proto-)MTsup2 There is however one textual tradition that has on many occasionsescaped this Hebraizing revision namely the Antiochian (L) tradition Often orig-inal Old Greek (OG) readings can also be found in the daughter versions of theSeptuagint (LXX) especially in the Old Latin (OL) traditions Rahlfs was not yetaware of this kaige phenomenon and because of this he in fact considered theAntiochian text form as inferior to the majority text

Because of the kaige revision many differences between the original Septua-gint translation and the Masoretic text have likely been lost forever However in2Kgs 17 the Antiochian text has clearly preserved some vestiges of the old textFurthermore the first third of the chapter has also been preserved in an OldLatin manuscript Palimpsestus Vindobonensis (La115) which has been recently

I want to thank Tuukka Kauhanen for his kind and helpful remarks on an earlier draft of thispaper See James K Aitken ldquoThe Origins of ΚΑΙ ΓΕrdquo in Biblical Greek in Context Essays in Honour ofJohn A L Lee ed James K Aitken and Trevor Evans (Leuven Peeters 2015) 21ndash40 for furtherinformation on the kaige revision

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-010

concluded to often preserve a very old and reliable textsup3 The manuscript seemsto have often ndash if not always ndash escaped the kaige revision even when other wit-nesses have not Therefore especially when the Antiochian text and La115 agreeagainst the majority text we can in most cases be fairly sure that the reading isan ancient one⁴

It has become evident in the research that already the Vorlage (ie the He-brew base text) of Septuagint 1ndash2Kings differed drastically from the Masoreticedition of the books This is especially noteworthy in 1Kings where the kaige re-vision has not faded out the differences between the two editions Even in 2Kingsthere can be found some differences in the compositional layout of these twomain versions In fact 2Kgs 17 is likely to be one such passage where these edi-tions originally differed from each other considerably⁵

For the edition of La115 see Bonifatius Fischer ldquoPalimpsestus Vindobonensis A Revised Edi-tion of L115 for Samuel-Kingsrdquo BIOSCS 16 (1983) 13ndash87 For the characteristics of La115rsquos textsee Tuukka Kauhanen ldquoSeptuagint in the West the Significance of the Post-Lucianic Latin Wit-nesses for the Textual History of Kingsrdquo in Die Septuaginta ndash Orte und Intentionen ed SiegfriedKreuzer Martin Meiser and Marcus Sigismund (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2016) 309ndash25 TimoTekoniemi ldquoIs There a (Proto‐)Lucianic Stratum in the Text of 1 Kings of the Old Latin Manu-script La115rdquo in The Antiochean Text and the Antiochean Manuscripts ed Kristin De Troyer (Goumlt-tingenVandenhoeck amp Ruprecht forthcoming) Some of the text of 2Kgs 17 has also preserved inthe Old Latin witness LaM (also known as La91-95) see for an edition of LaM Antonio Moreno LasGlosas Marginales de Vetus Latina en Las Biblias Vulgatas Espantildeolas 1ndash2 Reyes (Madrid CSIC1992) 97ndash 144 and a study of some of its most notable readings by Julio Trebolle ldquoReadings ofthe Old Latin (Beuron 91ndash95) Reflecting ldquoAdditionsrdquo of the Antiochene Text in 3ndash4 Kingdomsrdquoin The Legacy of Bartheacutelemy 50 Years after Les Devanciers drsquoAquila ed Anneli Aejmelaeus andTuukka Kauhanen (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2017) 120ndash45 Even though some Lucianic readings may have very sporadically seeped into La115 for themost part the agreements between the two are proto-Lucianic see Tekoniemi ldquoIs There a(Proto‐)Lucianic Stratumrdquo La115 does have however some highly intriguing characteristics in2Kgs that are found nowhere else in the Greek tradition the death narrative of Elisha(1314ndash21) is transposed after verse 1030 the chapter 16 is missing between 15 and 17 (andwas likely originally situated after chapter 17) and in chapter 17 verse 7 is in a completely differ-ing form from MTLXX verse 8 is missing and verses 9ndash 14 and 15ndash19 have been transposedwith each other As can be seen a study of La115rsquos text in 2Kgs 17 could yield some interestingtext-historical results See Julio Trebolle ldquoTextual Pluralism and Composition of the Books of Kings 2 Kings172ndash23rdquo in After Qumran Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts the Historical Booksed Hans Ausloos Benedicte Lemmelijn and Julio Trebolle (Leuven Peeters 2012) 213ndash26and Timo Tekoniemi ldquoOn the Verge of Textual Literary and Redaction Criticism The Case of2 Kings 177rdquo in The Antiochean Text and the Antiochean Manuscripts ed Kristin De Troyer (Goumlt-tingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht forthcoming)

212 Timo Tekoniemi

In this paper three substantial text-critical cases will be analyzed Most ofthem are interesting not only from the textual but also from a broader methodo-logical viewpoint since their analysis could also have repercussions for the his-torical and literary theories of the chapter or even the Book of Kings as a wholeThis is indeed how text-criticism and literary criticism converge with each otherwhen the most original text is found in other witnesses than MT also a reassess-ment of the literary theories bearing on the said text is in order

2 Hoshea The Worst or Not-So-Worst Kingof Israel

2Kgs 172 has for long been a matter of debate because of its strange and unex-pected judgment of Hoshea Unlike what could be expected according to the MTHoshea ldquodid evil in the eyes of Yahweh only not as much as the kings of Israelwho were before himrdquo Hoshea is thus apparently said to have been better thansome or even any of the other kings of Israel There is nothing in the textthat would evoke such a lenient indiction however unless one takes the lackof a customary remark of Jeroboamrsquos sin in verses 1ndash6 as an indication of himno more ldquowalking in the sin of Jeroboamrdquo As the last king of Israel duringwhose reign the northern kingdom was exiled the complete opposite could beexpected that is Hoshea even being the most evil king of Israel

To alleviate these problems some scholars have proposed that possibly theturbulent political climate of Hoshearsquos reign did not simply allow Hoshea tofocus on the cultic misdeeds of Israelrsquos previous kings⁶ This idea runs into prob-lems however when it is noted that even Zechariah who only reigned for6 months and whose reign most probably was even more turbulent than thatof Hoshea is said in 2Kgs 159 to have sinned ldquolike his fathers had donerdquo Onthe other hand according to the rabbinic tradition Hoshea let the northern Is-raelites take freely part in the cult at Jerusalem⁷ which would have of course

John Gray I amp II Kings A commentary (London SCM Press 1964) 583 (ldquoHis comparative virtueaccording to Deuteronomic principles was a virtue of necessityrdquo) Gwilym H Jones 1 and 2 Kings(Grand Rapids MI Cambridge Eerdmans 1984) 546 Some have also noted that Hoshearsquos val-iant resistance against Assyria could have earned him this honor see Norman H Snaith I and IIKings (New York Abingdon Press 1954) 278 Volkmar Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige (ZuumlrichTheologischer Verlag 1998) 95 However nowhere else does standing up to a foreign power by aking of Israel seem to evoke such positive evaluation Cf Taʿan 30bndash31a Giṭ 88a B Bat 121b This would be partly in line with the 2Chr 301ndash 12where Hezekiah sends letters to the northern Israelites inviting them to take part in his Pass-

Between Two Differing Editions Some Notable Text-Critical Variants in 2 Kings 17 213

mitigated his blame even in the eyes of the Deuteronomistic Historian⁸ Howeverthere are no traces of this in the text itself

It has also been noted by the medieval rabbi Rashi that after Dan was lostto the Assyrians in 2Kgs 1529 there would indeed be a good reason to arguewhy Hoshea simply could not have been as evil as his predecessor(s) with theloss of Dan also the blame for one of the golden calves of Jeroboam wouldhave been canceled⁹ Therefore Hoshea only had the sole calf at Bethel underhis rule from the beginning of his reign Since the ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo usuallyequated with him making the calves is the most important transgression Israelrsquoskings are blamed for Hoshea could have then indeed been at most only half asbad as any of the kings before him

However most theories have not taken into account the text-critical evi-dencewhich gives a completely different picture of Hoshea according to the An-tiochian text and the Old Latin witnesses La115 and LaM Hoshea was indeed themost evil king of Israel ldquoAnd he did evil before Lord more than all who were be-fore himrdquo As the reading of L is backed up by both OL witnesses and can quiteeasily be translated back into Hebrewsup1⁰ it is very likely that the reading is at leastproto-Lucianic (and therefore not a ldquoperversion of Lucianrdquosup1sup1) and most probablyOld Greeksup1sup2

over The results were not stellar however and nothing is said about the king of Israel letting hispeople go freely but according to the Chronicler some Israelites indeed do take part in the fes-tivities To DtrH the ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo most likely was simply the decentralization of the Yahwisticcult from Jerusalem not the making of the idolatrous golden calves see Juha Pakkala ldquoJero-boam without Bullsrdquo ZAW 120 (2008) 501ndash25 Arie Van der Kooij ldquoZur Exegese von II Reg 172rdquo ZAW 96 (1984) 109ndash 12 Cf Miqrarsquoot Gedolot2Kgs 172 Rashi concludes that because there were no more calves to worship Hoshea must havelet the Israelites take part in the cult of Jerusalem The Vorlage likely read וינפל)ויה(רשאלכמהוהייניעבערהשעיו As noted by James Montgomery A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Kings(Edinburgh TampT Clark 1986 ed Henry Snyder Gehman) 464 and later echoed by many othercommentators Similarly Andreacutes Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Edit The Oxford Hebrew Bible Edition of 2 Kings171ndash23rdquo in After Qumran Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts The Historical Booksed Hans Ausloos Benedicte Lemmelijn and Julio Trebolle (BETL 246 Leuven Peeters 2012)227ndash43 esp 230ndash31 Julio Trebolle Centena in Libros Samuelis et Regum Variantes Textualesy Composicioacuten Literaria en los Libros de Samuel y Reyes (Madrid CSIC 1989) 189

214 Timo Tekoniemi

How should this difference between the texts be assessed Many commentatorsbeginning with Bernhard Stade have held that the reading ldquomore thanrdquo is a latechange motivated by the context it would indeed be easier to see the last mon-arch of Israel as the most evil one while him being not as evil as others could beargued to be ideologically the lectio difficiliorsup1sup3 On the other hand the fact thatHoshea does not seem to do anything to earn himself his judgment may just aswell have prompted the MT editor as Andreacutes Piquer notes to change the judg-ment it does indeed seem strange for such a minor character to possibly havebeen worse than Jeroboam or especially the Omride kings the absolute epitomesof evil in the Book of Kingssup1⁴ Furthermore the arguments given above for mak-ing sense of the reading of MT could also be at least to certain extent reversedfor instance it would not seem impossible that a later reviser similarly to Rashiin the medieval times noticed the second calf missing in the times of Hoshea ndashand more importantly the fact that Hoshea is also not accused of the ldquosin of Jer-oboamrdquo ndash and deducted that as a result of this he indeed could not have been theworst king of Israelsup1⁵ Therefore both sides of the argument fail to convince com-pletely on their own as they are reversible with each othersup1⁶ There is a need forcumulative evidence

Bernhard Stade The Books of Kings (Leipzig Hinrichs 1904) 260 Similarly also AlbertŠanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige Das Zweite Buch der Koumlnige (Muumlnster Aschendorffsche Verlags-buchhandlung 1912) 212 and many others Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Editrdquo 237 Christoph Levin ldquoDie Froumlmmigkeit der Koumlnige von Israel und Judardquo in Houses Full of AllGood Things Essays in Memory of Timo Veijola ed Juha Pakkala and Martti Nissinen (HelsinkiFinnish Exegetical Society 2008) 129ndash68 indeed assumes that Hoshea stopped with Jero-boamrsquos sin ldquoDer letzte Koumlnig Hoschea schlieszliglich unterlaumlszligt die Suumlnde Jeroboams ganzrdquo (156) See for discussion of the reversibility of text-critical arguments Adrian Schenker ldquoMan bittetum das Gegenargument Von der Eigenart textkritischer Argumentationrdquo ZAW 122 (2010)53ndash63 and Ville Maumlkipelto Timo Tekoniemi and Miika Tucker ldquoLarge-Scale Transposition as


The solution may be found when the other similar judgment formulae aretext-critically assessed While most Israelite kings are simply condemned forldquodoing evil in the eyes of Yahwehrdquo without any comparisons the Omridekings Omri (1Kgs 1625) Ahab (1630 33) Ahaziah (2254) and Joram (2Kgs118b OG32 MT) are all said to have been either worse (Omri Ahab) or as evil(Ahaziah Joram) as their predecessors However this picture changes somewhatafter the textual evidence is taken into account in 1Kgs 2254 Ahaziah is in L saidnot to have provoked Yahweh ldquolike all that his father had donerdquo ( השע־רשאלככ

ויבא ) as in MT but in fact παρὰ πάντας τοὺς γενομένους ἔμπροσθεν αὐτουldquomore than all who were before himrdquosup1⁷ The fact that there is in two different pla-ces a similar difference between the witnesses raises a question are these differ-ences simply coincidentalsup1⁸

The most important thing to note is that both Ahaziah and Hoshea rule afterAhab This is important since Ahab is often thought to be the main antagonistand evildoer in the Book of Kings which is indeed the case on the basis of MTrsquostext no-one else after him is said to have been worse (although Ahaziah is saidto have been as evil as him) than his predecessors In OG this is of course not thecase even though Ahab is clearly the ldquomain villainrdquo of Kings he is nevertheless

an Editorial Technique in the Textual History of the Hebrew Biblerdquo TC A Journal of Biblical Tex-tual Criticism 22 (2017) 1ndash16 The rest of the LXXwitnesses give the text as κατὰ πάντα τὰ γενόμενα ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ ldquoac-cording to all that (τὰ) was before himrdquo It seems like this text has been partially corrected to-wards the MT by kaige reviser by simply changing the preposition παρὰ of L to κατὰ but leavingthe ldquoall [whothat] were before himrdquo intact (the difference between the neuter plural of kaige andmasculine plural of OG is significant in Greek only since both translate the Hebrew רשא ) Inter-estingly the Hexaplaric witnesses have not been further harmonized towards MT either Anaccidental change κατα ~ παρα is possible although not one of the likeliest of mistakes Thereading of L is also supported by LaM Et servivit Baalim et adoravit illi superponens in malitiauniversis quae gesta erant ante eum Adrian Schenker Aumllteste Textgeschichte der KoumlnigsbuumlcherDie hebraumlische Vorlage der urspruumlnglichen Septuaginta als aumllteste Textform der Koumlnigsbuumlcher (Fri-bourg Academic Press 2004) 100 also notes that in 2Kgs 118d (not found in MT) L has a harsh-er condemnation of Ahaziah as L adds ldquoand Yahweh became angry (L +towards him and) to-wards the house of Ahabrdquo While this is true this plus of L is probably best seen as arecensional Lucianic addition It is theoretically possible that the changes in L are in both cases due to the Lucianic reviserbut this does not seem very likely while the reviser indeed changes many readings (for instancethe use of the preposition παρὰ instead of ὑπὲρ [cf 1Kgs 1625 33] may be recensional) he usu-ally did it so that the meaning of the text did not notably change ndash at least as much as in thesecases

216 Timo Tekoniemi

not the worst of the bunch but only gets the third place after two quite insignif-icant kings (Ahaziah only rules for 2 years and Hoshea for 9 years)sup1⁹

This is in fact not the only case where LXX gives a more ambivalent pictureof Ahab for example Philippe Hugo argues that in 1Kgs 17ndash 19 the picture ofAhab differs between the unrepentant evildoer of MT and a more ambivalentking of LXXsup2⁰ Because of this some scholars have proposed that LXX wantedto improve or ldquowhitewashrdquo the quite dark picture of Ahab given by MT for ldquomid-rashic purposesrdquosup2sup1 While not impossible this does not seem very likely it ismore conceivable for evil characters to become more evil in the textual processthan the opposite ndash especially when we are dealing with Ahab the evildoer parexcellence In this case it seems that the picture of Ahab was indeed blackwash-ed by MT by later changing the judgments of two quite insignificant kings frombeing the most evil to either being as evil as Ahab or even to possibly being theleast evil of all the kings of Israelsup2sup2 Furthermore in chapter 17 the king(s) of Is-rael are not blamed for the destruction but the people which is ideologicallyunusual in the Book of Kingssup2sup3 It could be argued that the MT edition putseven more blame on the people (thus ldquodemocratizingrdquo the sin of Jeroboam) byfurther trivializing the role of Hoshea The ldquoharmonizedrdquo reading of OG in2Kgs 172 is thus likely the most original judgment of Hoshea

This textual problem of verse 2 has further redactional significance Accord-ing to MT Hoshea who ldquodid what was wrong in the eyes of Yahweh though notlike the kings of Israel before himrdquo seems to do nothing particularly wrong ndash ap-parently he did not even walk in the sin(s) of Jeroboam This is of course bafflingIf we are to understand like the early rabbis that Hoshea being the not-worst

The late addition 1Kgs 2125 further supports the idea of Ahab being seen as the most evilking Even Manasseh the reason for Judahrsquos demise is compared to Ahab and is told to haveldquomade an Asherah like Ahab had donerdquo (2Kgs 213) Therefore Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Editrdquo237 notes on Hoshea ldquohellip MT tried to smoothen incongruities in the narrative as it would cer-tainly seem odd that this late minor monarch whose reign fills barely a couple lines in the nar-rative of Kings could be more evil than Jeroboam who split Israel or than Omri and Ahab tar-gets of choice of biblical invective against the Northern Kingdomrdquo See Philippe Hugo Les deux Visages drsquoEacutelie (Fribourg Academic Press 2006) 326ndash27 sim-ilarly Andrzej Turkanik Of Kings and Reigns a Study of Translation Technique in the GammaGamma Section of 3 Reigns (1 Kings) (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2008) 207 David Gooding ldquoAhab According to the Septuagintrdquo ZAW 76 (1964) 269ndash80 esp 277ndash79idem ldquoProblems of Text and Midrash in the Third Book of Reignsrdquo Textus 7 (1969) 1ndash29esp 26ndash27 Similarly Schenker Aumllteste Textgeschichte 116ndash22 Hartmut Roumlsel ldquoWhy 2 Kings 17 Does Not Constitute a Chapter of Reflection in the lsquoDeutero-nomic Historyrsquordquo JBL 128 (2009) 85ndash90 esp 88ndash89


king means that the worship of the calves in Bethel andor Dan had alreadyceasedsup2⁴ the condemnation must come from late redactors since it is unlikelythat the calves were yet present in the Historianrsquos textsup2⁵ Of course the factthat the OG gives in 172 a completely differing reading already shows us thateven the passages we may have thought to be the most ancient ones couldhave been completely changed during later transmissional processes Thus itis exceedingly important to conduct the text-critical work first with no redaction-al preconceptions concerning the passages in question

3 The Historical Problems of Verse 4Adrammelek the Ethiopian and the Tributeof Hoshea

Verse 174 has incited quite a lot of discussion from the historical viewpointmainly because of the strange name of the Egyptian Pharaoh ldquoSocirc the king ofEgyptrdquo to whom Hoshea sent messengerssup2⁶ Despite the several dynasties andPharaohs reigning simultaneously at the time of Israelrsquos last yearssup2⁷ no Pharaoheasily recognized as ldquoSocircrdquo seems to have ruled during Israelrsquos demise ThereforeSocirc has been identified with numerous Pharaohs such as Tefnakht Osorkon IVor Piye and sometimes not even as a personal name but as a name of a city Saisndash while some have proposed that the ldquonamerdquo is in fact a job description forldquocommanderrdquo (ṯ3) or more likely ldquokingrdquo (nsw)sup2⁸ No scholarly consensus hasbeen formed on the identification of Socirc

As argued by Van der Kooij ldquoZur Exegeserdquo 111ndash 12 The calves in 1Kgs 1228ndash30 are likely a late invention See Pakkala ldquoJeroboamrsquos Sin andBethel in 1Kgs 1225ndash33rdquo BN 112 (2002) 86ndash94 The text of MT is clear and lucid and most probably should not be emended in any wayMost of the emendations have indeed been born of the need to make the name ldquoSocircrdquo work inthe historical context of the text not because of problems of the text itself See Kenneth Kitchen The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100ndash650 B C) (WarminsterAris amp Phillips 1973) 362ndash72 For an overall picture of the problems pertaining to ldquoSocircrdquo see John Day ldquoThe Problem of lsquoSocircKing of Egyptrsquo in 2 Kings XVII 4rdquo VT 42 (1992) 289ndash301

218 Timo Tekoniemi

The Greek witnesses have rarely been considered when assessing this problemMostly they have been brushed aside as either irrelevant or as early attempts tomake sense of the strange name ldquoSocircrdquosup2⁹ As expected most manuscripts indeedgive simply the MT name or a variation of it ΣωαΣωβα or a corrupted form

See eg Duane Christensen ldquoThe Identity of King Socirc in Egypt (2 Kings XVII 4)rdquo VT 39(1989) 140ndash53 esp 141 (ldquohellip the most significant of the earliest attempts to eliminate ldquoKingSordquohelliprdquo) Donald Redford ldquoA Note on II Kings 174rdquo JSSEA 11 (1981) 75ndash76 esp 75 (ldquoLucian sub-stitutedrdquo) Day ldquoThe Problem of lsquoSocirc king of Egyptrsquordquo 298 also gives a lengthy mention of theLucianic reading but discusses it no further


Σηγωρsup3⁰ However the proto-Lucianic (= OG) text of L and the OL witnesses dif-fers from the majority tradition calling him possibly even more strangelyldquoAdrammelek the Ethiopian who dwelt in Egyptrdquo Such a reading hardly cameto be because of an accident and OG clearly reflects an independent literary tra-dition from MTsup3sup1

Adrammelek is obviously neither an Ethiopian nor an Egyptian name andon basis of its distribution it seems rather like a ldquostock-namerdquo that could beused for different purposes in 2Kgs 1731 it reappears as a name of a foreigngod and in 1937 (= Isa 3738) as a name of a son of Sennacherib ndash albeitthere it could also be a genuine corrupted historical namesup3sup2 There seems tobe thus no historically relevant information in the name here ndash quite the contra-ry the name seems like a literary construct There is however one interestingand historically quite legitimate remark in the OG text that is lacking from MTat the time of Hoshearsquos reign both upper and even lower Egypt seem to havebeen at least nominally under the rule of the Ethiopian 25th dynastysup3sup3 Howshould one then assess these two completely differing names ldquoSocircrdquo and ldquoAdram-melekrdquo

Σηγωρ B CI a f 64txt 381 55 158 244 318 342 372] Σωα AV 247 121 64mg-488 71 245 Σωβα rel Thereading Σηγωρ of B-tradition is not likely to stem from the majority text and seems to be a tran-scription of רעצ see Dominique Bartheacutelemy Critique Textuelle de lrsquoAncien Testament vol 1 (Goumlt-tingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1982) 408 according to whom this is ldquoune assimilation mal-heureuserdquo This happenstance may be somehow connected to the textual confusion in the latterpart of the verse where even MT gives a double reading והרצעיו hellip והרסאיו and where the OG wit-nesses have the mysterious plus ὕβρισε (τὸν Ὠσῆ) ὑβρίζω possibly deriving from the same rootas the mystical Σηγωρ רעצ (ldquoto be insignificantrdquo Targums ldquohifpi to subordinateshamerdquo) Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Editrdquo 234ndash35 238 One has to wonder whether this recurrence of the name in 1731 has something to do withthe mystical appearance or disappearance of Socirc or Adrammelek in verse 174 Simo ParpolaldquoThe Murderer of Sennacheribrdquo Death in Mesopotamia ed Bendt Alster (Copenhagen Akade-misk Forlag 1980) 171ndash82 esp 174 has convincingly argued that the wrongly spelt nameAdrammelek of 2Kgs 1937 can indeed be found in the Assyrian sources as a son and murdererof Sennacherib in the form Arda-dNINLIacuteL to be read in Neo-Assyrian times as Arda-Mullissi Ac-cording to Parpola the form Adrammelek can be explained as a scribal error (from the form ldquoAr-damelosrdquo for instance)While this is indeed likely the reason for this ldquoscribal mistakerdquomay alsobe harmonization towards the two other mentions of the name ldquoAdrammelekrdquo before the one in1937 Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Editrdquo 235 hypothesizes that Hoshea may have been historicallysomehow linked to this murder and conspiracy as shown by OG but that the mention of hisinvolvement in the text has become distorted in the long history of the text Perhaps thename was even understood at some point as a sort of ldquostock-name for a conspiratorrdquo becauseof its appearance in 1937 and was taken over from there Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 362ndash8 Donald Redford Egypt Canaan and Israel in An-cient Times (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1992) 345ndash47

220 Timo Tekoniemi

Because of these unexpected traits of OG Adrian Schenker argues that theMT tradition could in fact be reflecting a textual situation posterior to that ofthe OGsup3⁴ First Adrammelekrsquos ldquojob descriptionrdquo is completely lacking and hasto be deducted from the context he could be anything from a mercenary to aking (which could in a way quite well reflect the confusing state of the Egyptianpolitics of the time) In MT there is no room for any confusion On the other handthe name ldquoSocircrdquo is indeed much more Egyptian a name (possibly even a transcrip-tion of nsw ldquokingrdquo or an abbreviation of (O)so(rkon)) than ldquoAdrammelekrdquo andit would be easy to see why the strange remark of an Ethiopian called Adramme-lek who lives in Egypt would have later been changed into much more under-standable and possibly even Egyptian-sounding ldquoSocirc [that is] king of Egyptrdquosince the literary motive of Israelites depending on the help of Egypt and itsking is somewhat common in the Hebrew Bible also here it would makesense that Hoshea asked for help from ldquothe king of Egyptrdquosup3⁵ Thirdly the factthat the name ldquoAdrammelekrdquo confusingly appears in two completely differingcontexts elsewhere makes it likely that MT has here smoothened a text thatseems quite contradictory with itself how could Hoshea send messengers toan Ethiopian who concurrently seems to be a son of Sennacherib and evenmore confusingly is revered as a god by the later Mesopotamian inhabitantsof the province of Samariasup3⁶ It is thus quite easy to see why the text wouldhave been changed to the MT version while the opposite a change from thelucid MT to the somewhat strange and contradictory OG text would be quite un-expected

Stepping from the realm of textual criticism to that of literary theories JulioTrebolle has argued that the narrative of the Assyrian king finding out aboutHoshearsquos conspiracy in verse 4aα is itself a later interpolation to the verseand that MT has in the verse overall a later version of the textsup3⁷ Indeed inOG version there seems to be a resumptive repetition (Wiederaufnahme) in verses3b and 4aβ both recounting the fact that ldquoHoshea bore tribute to the king of As-syriardquo indicating that 4aα might be a later interpolationsup3⁸ Unlike in MT in OGHoshea never ceases paying tribute which is surprising since in MT version this

Schenker Aumllteste Textgeschichte 117ndash 19 Cf 2Kgs 1821 24 Hos 711 122 Jer 377ndash8 Isa 302ndash5 311ndash2 Ezek 292ndash7 See Matthieu Richelle ldquoIntentional Omissions in the Textual History of the Books of KingsIn Search of Methodological Criteriardquo Sem 58 (2016) 135ndash57 esp 141ndash46 for a similar omissionof contradicting information in 1Kgs 1426 Julio Trebolle ldquoLa Caida de Samaria Critica Textual Literaria e Historica de 2 Re 17 3ndash6rdquoSalmanticensis 28 (1981) 137ndash52 Trebolle ldquoLa caidardquo 142 146ndash47


cessation seems to now be one of the main reasons why the Assyrian king in-vades Israelsup3⁹ It is possible that MT has here slightly smoothed the logic ofthe text (lectio facilior) by having Hoshea also withhold his annual tribute ontop of his conspiracy⁴⁰

Even more surprising is the OG plus following the second remark of Hoshearsquostribute despite the yearly tribute the king of Assyria ὕβρισε τὸν Ὠσῆ ldquoinsultedmaltreatedinjured Hosheardquo⁴sup1 as if Hoshea was simply a victim of the whims ofthe king of Assyria This reading becomes even more baffling if 4aα is deleted asa late addition there would be in the text no apparent reason why Hoshea andIsrael would have been invaded by Assyria and Hoshea ldquomaltreatedrdquo by theirking The situation could be compared to the similar enigmatic mention ofking Josiah dying at the hands of Pharaoh Necho in 2Kgs 2329 Such a textform would suit the minimalistic annalistic style of Kings⁴sup2 but would under-standably seem strange to a later reviser It seems thus likely that OG has pre-served a more original version of verse 4 MT reflecting the final edition of thetext

The whole account of Hoshea asking for the help of Egypt against Assyriacould thus be simply a late literary construct borne from the common (theolog-ical) motive of futile dependence on Egypt and a base text that seemed strange

One could also read this as a demonstration of Hoshearsquos cunning even though he sent mes-sengers to Egypt he did not stop with the tribute so that his conspiracy would not becomeknown Similarly Pablo Torijano ldquoTextual Criticism and the Text-Critical Edition of IV RegnorumThe Case of 172ndash6rdquo in After Qumran Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts the HistoricalBooks ed Hans Ausloos Beacuteneacutedicte Lemmelijn and Julio Trebolle (Leuven Peeters 2012)195ndash211 esp 205ndash207 Similar although apparently independent (a Vorlage different from[proto‐]MT) smoothing tendencies can be seen also in the kaige B-text It is also good tonote that the construct החנמ+הלע of MT is above all cultic (ldquoto offer burnt offeringsrdquo) not po-litical (usually translated in 2Kgs 174 as ldquoto pay tributerdquo) in its usage in the Hebrew Bible andtherefore somewhat unexpected here cf Ex 309 4029 Lev 1420 Judg 1319 Josh 2223 1Kgs1829 36 (gtLXX) 2Kgs 320 Isa 576 663 Jer 1412 Amos 522 It is hard to confirm the Vorlage of this reading since ὑβρίζω is a very rare verb in LXXcf 2Sam 1944 (lt ללק ) Isa 133 2312 Jer 3129 (lt ןואג ) Apart from ללק another plausible underly-ing verb could be רעצ as noted above If this was the case it would be possible that either theVorlage of ὕβρισε (lt והר)י(עציו ) or the MT reading ( והרצעיו ) has been borne out of a misreading ofa similar looking verbal form ndash maybe the MT form was thus borne out of an accidental harmo-nization towards the phonologically quite similar והרסאיו The text of OG without 4aα would read thusly ldquo3Against him rose Shalmaneser the king ofAssyrians and Hoshea became to him a servant and he bore him tribute 4aβ[Wiederaufnahmeand he was bearing him tribute] from year to year And the king of Assyrians insultedmaltreat-edinjured Hoshea and put him in prisonrdquo

222 Timo Tekoniemi

to a later reviser⁴sup3 It is therefore unlikely that there is much historical data to befound in the remark other than that there was according to OG an Ethiopiandynasty reigning in Egypt at the time and that this dynasty was at least atsome point thought to have been mighty enough to have had diplomatic rela-tions with Israel⁴⁴ The mention of ldquoSocirc the king of Egyptrdquo seems then like aneven later literarily-motivated harmonization

4 A Vestment of a Yahwistic High Priestin Samaria

In verse 1717 there is a curious plus in L and La115 in addition to Israelites prac-ticing divinations they also ldquomade an ephod and teraphimrdquo

It is quite clear that this plus is not a result of some textual mishap at least atypographical oneWe are most probably dealing with a literary variant betweenMT and very likely OG⁴⁵ When noted by commentators the most common ex-planation for this plus is that this mention was a gloss-like addition made inLXX either at the level of OG or some later copying stage⁴⁶ The additionwould have been made for the purpose of adding even more sins to the alreadylengthy listing of Israelrsquos misdeeds⁴⁷ The addition would have not been made

See similarly Christoph Levin in his chapter in this volume who argues quite convincinglythat verse 4 was likely not part of the most original version of the text Here the text-critical con-siderations thus can indeed help further corroborate even purely literary critical theories Maybe even this could have been later deduced by a glossator possibly from 2Kgs 199whereldquoTirhakah the king of Ethiopiardquo is mentioned Already Alfred Rahlfs Lucians Rezension der Koumlnigsbuumlcher Septuaginta-Studien 2 (Goumlttin-gen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1965) 290 classified this plus as ldquoVorlucianisches Gut in LrdquoThe plus is easily translatable back into Hebrew םיפרתודפאושעיו According to Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings A New Translation with Introduc-tion and Commentary (New York Doubleday 1988) 205ndash206 this plus is indeed due to ldquothe ten-dency of translators and copyists to add elements in catalogue-like listingsrdquo (although it is ex-ceedingly unlikely that this plus is due to the Septuagint translator) See also Stade Kings 264who notes ldquohellip originally a marginal gloss It seemed to a later reader as though this could not bedispensed with in the catalogue of Israelrsquos heresiesrdquo It could even be that this addition was made as a partial harmonization to the phrase foundin 2Kgs 216 (ldquoκαὶ οἰωνίζετο καὶ ἐποίησεν θελητὴνrdquo) but in that case the harmonizer would havedone an extremely bad job at his attempt


haphazardly since both the ephod and teraphim are indeed at times used in div-inatory practices⁴⁸

Ephod is used for ldquoasking Yahwehrdquo in 1Sam 239ndash 12 (LXX lacks verse 12) 307ndash8 and is inExodus often mentioned in connection with the breast-plate where Urim and Thummim werepositioned (Ex 257 284 15 28 (gtLXX) 295 359 27 398 21) Teraphim are used for divinationin Ezek 2121 and possibly Zech 102 Teraphim are also mentioned together with ephod in Judg175 1814 17 18 20 Hos 34 (different in LXX)

224 Timo Tekoniemi

However some scholars have also seen this plus as a part of the original He-brew text⁴⁹ As Schenker notes it is actually not that clear whether ldquomakingephod and teraphimrdquo is even a sin in itself⁵⁰ at least ephod which is eventwice consulted by David himself was quite clearly considered a part of the le-gitimate cult and is nowhere denounced as such⁵sup1 The teraphim on the otherhand are more often seen as a form of idolatry⁵sup2 Therefore we are in a toughspot on one hand it would be quite understandable to have the sinful Israelitesalso ldquomake teraphimrdquo as they clearly at least at some point came to be seen asidolatrous devices On the other hand making an ephod does not seem like agood sin (or sin at all) to add to the list On the other hand why would teraphimhave been taken off the text if they worked so well in the context Were they in-deed simply added in OG or its Hebrew Vorlage as a gloss of sorts possibly toincrease the sinfulness of the Israelites

The key to the problem may indeed lie in the ephod While still somewhatenigmatic it is quite clear that this usually quite lavishly adorned vestmentwas worn by priests and therefore it was indeed part of the legitimate Yahwisticcult Most importantly even though an ephod of some kind ( דבדופא ldquolinen

August Klostermann Die Buumlcher Samuelis und der Koumlnige (Noumlrdlingen Beck 1887) 454Adrian Schenker Une Bible Archeacutetype Les parallegravelles de Samuel-Rois et des Chroniques ed Mi-chaeumll Langlois (Paris Les Eacuteditions du Cerf 2013) 162ndash64 Schenker Une Bible 162ndash63 ldquoOn aurait donc deux fois en 2 Rois 1717 et 2 Rois 234 eacutelimineacutela mention de lrsquoephod drsquoun contexte paiumlen creacuteeacute par la deacutecadence religieuse du roi Manasseacuterdquo(163) Schenkerrsquos argument seems to be more about the text of Lucifer of Cagliari in 2Kgs 234than it is about 1717 and his argumentation does not really carry over from 234 to 1717 asthe contexts of these passages are so different (destruction of Samaria ndash reform of Josiah)That ephod was possibly omitted from the text in 234 does not in any way mean that itwould be omitted here as well especially when the ldquoreligious decadencerdquo of Manasseh towhich Schenker seems to give the blame in 1717 as well could not even have affected the Israel-ites yet See also Tuukka Kauhanen The Text of Kings and Lucifer of Cagliari (Atlanta GA SBLPress 2017) 293 who contends that the addition of ephod in 2Kgs 234 may be simply due toLuciferrsquos own modification of the text There are nevertheless some texts that seem to criticize ephod in the Hebrew Bible In Judg827 Gideon makes an ephod in Ophrah ldquoand all Israel played the harlot with it there so that itbecame a snare to Gideon and his householdrdquo Another story where ephod is criticized is thesatirical story about Micah and his own temple() in Judg 17ndash 18 However the biggest problemabout an ephod in these stories seems not to be its inherent unholiness (on the contrary theephod seems quite holy in both stories) but the fact that a wrong person has made an ephodand even more so to the wrong place (the Danites even take Micahrsquos ephod with them toDan) This way the case of 2Kgs 1717 may be in a way parallel to the idea expressed in thesestories as well wrong people have made an ephod to a wrong place (in north) See 1Sam 1523 2Kgs 2324 Zeph 102


ephodrdquo) is said to have been worn also by young Samuel and David⁵sup3 it seemsthat ephod was understood to have been especially a garment of the highpriest⁵⁴ This understanding of the word would in turn create an implicationaltheological tension in the OG text was there an ephod of a Yahwistic high priestin IsraelSamaria⁵⁵ This in turn would imply that there was also a legitimatesanctuary of Yahweh in Samaria This would have been something the later re-visers of the Second Temple period saw as highly inappropriate⁵⁶ Indeed in2Kgs 1724ndash41 the chapter becomes increasingly ldquoanti-Samaritanrdquo in its polemicTherefore it would not seem too strange if the mention of an ephod in context ofSamaria would be omitted even if it meant taking off the mention about the ter-aphim in connection to it

Since verse 17 is situated in the ldquohomileticalrdquo portion of the chapter(177ndash41) which very likely comes from later redactors than the ldquoannalisticrdquo vers-es 1ndash6 this implicit notion of a Yahwistic high priesthood in Samaria can hardlybe directly taken as describing a historical situation However a later omission ofsuch a remark would seem much more suspicious and possibly even more tell-ing of a historically extremely likely Yahwistic sanctuary in Samaria As noted byJuha Pakkala and Adrian Schenker it seems likely that the Masoretic edition ofSamuel-Kings is especially interested in omitting improper references to the ille-gitimate temple(s) of Yahweh and even Baal in Israel and Judah⁵⁷ It would thusbe expected that these Masoretic revisers were just as sensitive to possible ille-gitimate priestly garments in the Northern Kingdom as well

5 Conclusions

The notion that there was excessive rewriting in chapter 2Kgs 17 as is assumedby most literary critics is corroborated by the textual evidence there seem to betwo extant editions of chapter 17 preserved to us in textual witnesses ie MT and

In 1Sam 218 2Sam 614 This was the understanding of the rabbinic writers as well see Yehoshua M GrintzldquoEphodrdquo in EncJud 6 (Jerusalem Keter Publishing House 1972) 804ndash806 Carol MeyersldquoEphodrdquo in Anchor Bible Dictionary 2 (New York Doubleday 1992) 550 Both Judg 827 (Ophrah) and 17ndash 18 (Dan) also have the ldquowrong ephodrdquo in the area of thelater Northern kingdom These may both well be allusions to an illegitimate (high) priesthoodin SamariaNorthern kingdom similar to the case at hand Juha Pakkala Godrsquos Word Omitted Omissions in the Transmission of the Hebrew Bible (Goumlt-tingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2013) 233ndash34 Pakkala Godrsquos Word Omitted 213ndash22 231ndash37 243ndash45 Schenker Aumllteste Textgeschichte34ndash51 149ndash66 177ndash78

226 Timo Tekoniemi

LXX It is clear that even complete rewriting of some verses has happened in ei-ther the MT or the OG editions of the chapter Some details of the text changebetween the editions whether it be the evil of Hoshea in 2Kgs 172 or thename of the Egyptian ruler in verse 174 There likely even were several omissionsin the textual transmission of MT most notably in verse 2Kgs 1717 where theephod of a Yahwistic high priest is mentioned in OG edition

All of these textual remarks also have further repercussions to the use of thischapter as a witness to further scholarly assessments if the text was indeed re-written as extensively as seems to be the case how much of the text ndash and ofwhich edition ndash can be used for historical reconstructions for example Ifthere is indeed a considerable possibility that the Old Greek has at times pre-served a text form earlier than that of MT it is methodologically questionableto discard such readings from the get-go without first conducting a meticulousstudy of their origins

The extremely complicated literary-critical and redactional situation ofchapter 17 and the Book of Kings as a whole may also be further complicatedby the text-critical evidence since the different editions may occasionally haveeven completely differing texts in redactionally important passages In thecase of verse 172 it is indeed interesting to note that even a passage oftenthought to come from the earliest redactional stages may have been completelyrewritten in the transmission process and has now been transformed into a com-plete opposite of the original version in the latest form of the text attainable to us(either MT or OG)

A critical study of textual variants in 2Kgs 17 is thus not merely a matter oftheoretical discussion of unimportant details but likely of two widely variant ed-itions whose differences likely go back to a coherent revision on the part of oneor the other ndash or even both Because of this the text-critical importance of theSeptuagint should be taken most seriously both in this chapter and in Sa-muel-Kings as a whole


Danrsquoel Kahn

The Fall of Samaria an Analysis of theBiblical Sources

1 Introduction the Fall of Samaria in 2Kgs

The end of the Kingdom of Israel is described in Assyrian sources as well as bib-lical sources (2Kgs 173ndash6 and a similar description of the event in 2Kgs 189ndash 11synchronising the event with the reign of Hezekiah king of Judah) The historicalcircumstances leading to the fall of the kingdom are described in a highly con-densed paragraph Several Assyrian campaigns against Israel are alluded to aswell as its subjugation rebellion siege final capitulation and imprisonment ofits last king Hoshea However the Biblical account raises many questions aboutthe order of events Furthermore there is an apparent discrepancy between theidentity of the Assyrian conqueror in the Assyrian sources that claim that Sar-gon II of Assyria subdued Samaria and the Biblical accounts that claim that itwas Shalmaneser V of Assyria

In reconstructing the events several scholars (eg Bob Becking MordechaiCogan and Hayim Tadmor Nadav Narsquoaman Gershon Galil etc) suggested thatthe apparent chronological conundrums in 2Kgs 173ndash6 were caused by eitherthe merging of two or more sources ndash an Israelite chronicle and a Judean onean early chronicle and a late source or a redactional addition of a late editor

In this chapter I propose a literary reading of the Biblical text which maysolve these problems It is my contention that 2Kgs 173ndash6 is a coherent sourceWhen paying attention to the pronouns of each verse it becomes clear that theparagraph about the fall of Samaria (2Kgs 173ndash6) is organised according tothe following topics and not necessarily in chronological order the deeds andthe fate of the king of Israel the fate of the kingdom and city the fate of the in-habitants of Samaria In contrast 2Kgs 189ndash 11 is a composite literary text Thesynchronisms between Hezekiah king of Judah and Hoshea son of Elah king ofIsrael are the work of a redactor who inserted them into the narrative of Heze-kiah in order to contrast between the fate of the most pious king of Judah and thefate of his kingdom and the fate of Hoshea and the end of the kingdom of Israel

I dedicate this chapter to the memory of my beloved son Gilead Kahn zldquol who passed away on1 March 2018

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-011

2 Previous Analyses of 2Kgs 173ndash6 andProposed Solutions

2Kgs 173ndash6 narrates the fall of Samaria from a historical perspective It is fol-lowed by a theological explanation for the downfall of the Northern KingdomAn additional historical version appears in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 These two texts ashas been noted long ago closely resemble each other but are not entirely par-allel Vv 3ndash4 in 2Kgs 17 are missing in 2Kgs 18 while 2Kgs 175ndash6 resemble2Kgs 189ndash 11

I will first summarise the views of previous scholars Two main attitudes canbe detected in analysing 2Kgs 17 3ndash6 The first attitude is to consider 2Kgs 173ndash4and 5ndash6 (with its parallel in 189ndash 11) as two parallel accounts of the same eventfrom two different archival sources whether Israelite Judean or Assyrian Thesecond attitude is to see these verses as consecutive events from a single coher-ent source with possible additions of the Deuteronomistic Historian who wroteduring the exile at the earliest

After reviewing these suggestions and their merits and flaws I will forwardmy understanding of the composition of 2Kgs 173ndash6 and 2Kgs 189ndash 11 I willclaim that 2Kgs 173ndash6 is a single literary source and that the synchronisms be-tween Hezekiah and the last days of Samaria as maintained in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 arethe work of a redactor and are not original Therefore they cannot be used inreconstructing the historical events that led to the fall of Samaria

21 Two Parallel Accounts of the Same Event fromTwo Different Archives

In 1892 Hugo Wincklersup1 noted discrepancies in the narrative of 2Kgs 173ndash6 be-tween the imprisonment of Hoshea in v 4b and the beginning of the siege inv 5 He could not imagine that Samaria would endure a three-year siege withouthaving a king and without nominating a new one Furthermore the redactor un-derstood that the reign of Hoshea ended with the fall of Samaria in his ninth reg-nal year and not at the beginning of the siegeWinckler was probably the first to

Hugo Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1892) 16ndash25 (ldquoBeitraumlgezur quellenscheidung der Koumlnigsbuumlcherrdquo)

230 Danrsquoel Kahn

suggest that 2Kgs 173ndash6 was composed of two units from different sourcessup2 Ac-cording to him 2Kgs 173ndash4 originated from one source and described the sub-jugation and later imprisonment of Hoshea whereas vv 5ndash6 and its parallel2Kgs 189ndash11 stem from a different source and describe the fall of Samariaand the exile of its population Winckler raised the question that if 2Kgs173ndash6 were constituted from one source how could 2Kgs 189ndash 11 its parallelfail to mention the imprisonment of Hoshea He could not imagine that this de-tail was omitted because the parallel pericope dealt with the history of JudahThus he concluded that this was proof that 2Kgs 173ndash6 was composed fromtwo different sources He did not explicitly state their origin but it is clearfrom his discussion that in his view vv 3ndash4 stemmed from an Israelite sourcethat followed upon 2Kgs 1530 describing the conspiracy of Hoshea who slewPekah and rose to the thronesup3

Immanuel Benzinger suggested that vv 3ndash4 stem from the Israelite annalsaccepting Wincklerrsquos division into two sources Vv 5ndash6 were regarded as deriv-ing from Judean annals attached by a later redactor who used 2Kgs 189ndash 12 ashis source⁴ Albert Šanda speculated that vv 3ndash4 may derive from Hoshearsquos an-nals whereas vv 5ndash6 may derive from a later compiler⁵ The ldquotwo sources hy-pothesisrdquo was also adopted by many scholars ie Rudolf Kittel⁶ Charles F Bur-ney⁷ Bernhard Stade and Friedrich Schwally⁸ Martin Noth⁹ John Graysup1⁰ RichardD Nelsonsup1sup1 Julio Trebollesup1sup2 Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmorsup1sup3 and Bob

Eg Otto Thenius Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Leipzig Hirzel 1873) 379ndash82 does not offer thisexplanation and Frederic William Farrar The Second Book of Kings (New York Armstrong1894) 235ndash43 does not mention the possible existence of two sources either Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen 16ndash25 Immanuel Benzinger Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Freiburg Universitaumltsverlag 1899) 172ndash73 Albert Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Muumlnster Aschendorf 1911) 217 Rudolf Kittel Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1900) 274 Charles F Burney Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Kings (Oxford Clarendon 1903)328ndash30 Bernhard Stade and Friedrich Schwally The Books of Kings (Leipzig Hinrichs 1904) 48 Martin Noth Uumlberlieferungsgeschichtliche Studie die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Ge-schichtswerke im Alten Testament (Darmstadt Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1963) 78 John Gray I amp II Kings a Commentary (Philadelphia Westminster Press 1975) 645ndash50 Richard D Nelson Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (Sheffield JSOT Press1981) 61ndash62 Julio Trebolle Barrera ldquoLa caiacuteda de Samariacutea criacutetica textual literaria e histoacuterica de 2 Re 173ndash6rdquo Salmanticensis 28 (1981) 137ndash52 Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings (New York Doubleday 1988) 196

The Fall of Samaria an Analysis of the Biblical Sources 231

Becking sup1⁴ It thus became a wide consensus to regard these verses as stemmingfrom two different sources an Israelite and a Judean source

The detailed information about Hoshearsquos conspiracy his alliance with Egyptand his rebellion against Assyria is found in vv 3ndash4 which shows knowledgeof Israelite politics between the superpowers Assigning these verses to an Isra-elite archival source is therefore certainly possible On the other hand vv 5ndash6which the majority of scholars regard as Judean is understood by ShemaryahuTalmon as a factual Israelite annalistic notation devoid of any derogatory con-notations against the fate of the Kingdom of Israelsup1⁵ It would seem that there isno clear criteria to distinguish between the origins of the alleged sources Fur-thermore Nadav Narsquoaman has rightly stressed sup1⁶ that there is no stylistic or lin-guistic difference between the two assumed sources The passage is written inthe same verbal patterns as many other passages in the Book of Kings includingother episodes that refer to campaigns by Assyrian kings against Israel or JudahIt opens in the past qatal form followed by verbs with the waw consecutive way-yiqtol form Hence there are no established criteria to identify either of theseverses as originating from an Israelite or Judean source and the linguistic divi-sion seems artificial

22 Brettlerrsquos View the Use of an Assyrian Sourceand Possible Later Editorial Work

The division of vv 3ndash6 into two sources has been slightly revised by Marc ZBrettlersup1⁷ Vv 5ndash6 are regarded as based on an early source Brettler speculatesthat they derive from an Assyrian text based on the progression of the verbswhich follows that of the Assyrian annals (the king going up against a countrybesieging and capturing it [alme akšud ašlula] exiling the inhabitants and set-tling them in foreign cities) and because of the list of cities in v 6 to which theconquered people were exiled Furthermore Brettler claims that v 6 originallyopened with ldquohe capturedrdquo ( דוכליו ) with a waw consecutive followed by the con-

Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria an Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill1992) 47ndash53 Shemaryahu Talmon ldquoPolemics and Apology in Biblical Historiography 2 Kings 1724ndash41rdquoin Shemaryahu Talmon Literary Studies in the Hebrew Bible Form and Content Collected Studies(Leiden Brill 1993) 141 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samariardquo Bib 71 (1990) 213 Marc Z Brettler ldquoText in a Tell 2 Kings 17 as Historyrdquo in Marc Z Brettler The Creation ofHistory in Ancient Israel (LondonNew York Routledge 1995) 112ndash 18

232 Danrsquoel Kahn

verted imperfect wayyiqtol and not with the date ldquoIn the ninth year of Hoshea theking of Assyria captured Samaria ( ןורמש־תארושא־ךלמדכלעשוהלתיעשתהתנשב )rdquo forthe following reasons

1 The grammatical past form ldquohe capturedrdquo ( דכל ) breaks the narrative sequence2 ldquoIn the ninth yearrdquo ( תיעשתהתנשב ) is a late addition since the syntax of that verse is only

found in texts which date to exile and later Furthermore if the source was Assyrian thetext would not date according to the regnal years of Hoshea Therefore the text musthave been added later

Therefore v 6aα is regarded as an addition based on the regnal years of Hosheamentioned in v 1 Brettler mentions the double introduction of the king of Assy-ria ldquohe went up againstrdquo ( הלע )sup1⁸ In addition the text in vv 4ndash5 suggests that theNorthern Kingdom withstood a three-year siege after its king was exiled this isalso regarded by Brettler as unlikely The similarities between the phrases thatopen v 3 and v 5 suggest to Brettler that this is a case of WiederaufnahmeThe reconstruction of v 4 and v 5 coming from different sources resolves inBrettlerrsquos opinion the problem of Samaria enduring a three-year siege withouta king The repeated notices in v 3a and v 5a are the result of redactional activityTherefore a later editor found or created an additional fragment which offeredbackground information concerning the political history of events that led upto the conquest of Samaria This information chronologically preceded the captureand exile of Samaria and was inserted as an introduction to vv 5ndash6 He markedthe insertion with a Wiederaufnahme The insertion names Shalmaneser incor-rectly accepting Narsquoamanrsquos suggestion that Samaria was conquered only onceby Sargon [italics mine]

In order to prove that vv 3ndash4 were an addition of a later editor Brettlernotes that the opening of the verse 3 רושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעוילע does notoccur in the Deuteronomistic History and is only found in 2Chr 366 הלעוילע

הלבבוכילהלםיתשחנבוהרסאיולבבךלמרצאנדכובנ (ldquoAgainst him King Nebuchadnez-zar of Babylon came up and bound him with fetters to take him to Babylonrdquo)

Brettler therefore regards this form as an exilic or post-exilic form added tothe original text Furthermore he deems the claim that Samaria was besieged forthree years unhistorical since the treatment of the city after its conquest follow-ing a three-year rebellion seems too mild He regards it as an accidental mistakeby a Judean scribe or copyist [italics mine] who turned the fact that Samaria wasconquered in Sargonrsquos third year into a three-year siege (however it actually oc-curred in his second regnal year) According to Brettler the origins of vv 3ndash4 are

The king of Assyria is actually mentioned five times in these verses


less clear The elements of paying tribute conspiring ceasing to pay tribute andbeing fettered are found in Assyrian royal inscriptions and it is possible thatthey were based on Assyrian inscriptions as well In most inscriptions the rebel-lious king is exiled to Assyria rather than imprisoned Furthermore there is nospecific material that requires access to Assyrian sources The only concrete in-formation in vv 3ndash4 namely the names of Shalmaneser and Soʾ king of Egyptare regarded by Brettler as highly suspect and understood as two historical er-rors by the late editor Brettler therefore concludes that vv 3ndash4 were createdto offer background information concerning the exile and may not be from anold source at all but created by an editor structured to conform to the biblicalpattern of being reliant on Egypt and being sent in fetters to Mesopotamia (cfhowever the fate of Manasseh [2Chr 3311] Jehoiachin [2Kgs 2412 no fetters men-tioned] Jehoiakim [2Chr 366] and Zedekiah [2Kgs 257])

Bustenay Oded accepting Brettlerrsquos suggestion of an Assyrian source addsthat the imprisonment of Hoshea before the fall of Samaria was probably basedon an Assyrian source in which Shalmaneser might have boasted that he im-prisoned Hoshea in his own town (ina ālīšu esiršu) According to Oded Hoshearsquosfate was not elaborated upon as in the case of other kings who were exiled andHoshearsquos imprisonment may have been superimposed upon Jehoiachinrsquos fate Asecond reason why Hoshearsquos fate was allegedly paralleled with Jehoiachinrsquos isaccording to Oded the fact that Hoshea was not considered in v 2 as bad ashis predecessors and therefore he was saved from death and imprisoned priorto the siegesup1⁹

23 Doubts Concerning Brettlerrsquos and Odedrsquos Views

However Brettlerrsquos and Odedrsquos arguments can be refuted on grammatical syn-tactical methodological and historical grounds

Whereas Brettler claimed that the description of the king going up againsta country besieging and capturing itsup2⁰ exiling the inhabitants and settlingthem in foreign cities derive from Assyrian royal inscriptions based on the pro-gression of the verbs it should be remembered that the Assyrian actions werestandard tactics and because of their standard occurrence in warfare becamestock phrases In the biblical verses these verbs appear but not only in 2Kgs

Bustanay Oded ldquoIssues in the Bible in Light of the Assyrian Inscriptionsrdquo Beit Mikra Jour-nal for the Study of the Bible and Its World 42 (1996) 4ndash6 (in Hebrew) alme ldquoI besiegedrdquo akšud ldquoI conqueredrdquo ašlula ldquoI carried off their spoils (including people)rdquo

234 Danrsquoel Kahn

17 According to this logic 2Kgs 1813 describing the arrival of the Assyrian armyin 701 BCE besieging and conquering all the cities of Judah should be consid-ered to derive from an Assyrian royal inscription as well But is this evidence ofcopying an Assyrian text or a reflection of reality Note that the harsher termsappul (ldquoI destroyedrdquo) aqqur (ldquoI devastatedrdquo) and aqmucirc (ldquoI set on firerdquo) are notused This seems to correspond with the archaeological findings at Samariasup2sup1

The elements of paying tribute conspiring ceasing to pay tribute and beingfettered are found in Assyrian royal inscriptions However since these elementswere widely practiced in the ancient Near East and Egyptsup2sup2 they do not have tobe regarded as originating from Assyrian texts

As Brettler noted the list of destinations of the deportees resembles thehabit of Assyrian royal inscriptions to specify deportations of exiles and their re-settling in remote parts of the empire However the Assyrian kings who deport-ed the Israelites did not specify the destination of the deportations According tomost royal inscriptions exiles were deported to Assyria or in broad terms to theeast or to the westsup2sup3 Only in very rare cases is the destination of the exiles speci-fied and the names of towns mentionedsup2⁴ In none of these cases do the Assyrianroyal inscription specify the breaking down of the settlement of deportees intospecific towns inside a region or their dispersal into several regions as is thecase of 2Kgs 176 Furthermore the list resembles the list in 2Kgs 1834 Doesthis mean that both should be regarded as based on an (unknown) Assyrian

Ron E Tappy ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samaria Toward a Dialogue between Texts andArchaeologyrdquo in Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeology and History of the EasternMediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie White Crawford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jeru-salem W F Albright Institute of Archaeological Research Israel Exploration Society 2007)265 275ndash76 Cf the terminology in Nazek Khalid Matty Sennacheribrsquos Campaign againstJudah and Jerusalem in 701 BC a Historical Reconstruction (Berlin de Gruyter 2016) 41ndash46 Cf the terms used in Egyptian texts Anthony John Spalinger Aspects of the Military Docu-ments of the Ancient Egyptians (New Haven Yale University Press 1982) Cf Bustenay Oded Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesba-den Harrassowitz 1979) and Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume Tiglath-pileser III Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pi-leser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Ei-senbrauns 2011) no 14 8 Sargon II Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad(Goumlttingen Cuvillier Verlag 1994) 290 Zyl 19ndash20 313ndash 14 Ann 16ndash 17 315 Ann 66ndash67 320Ann 120ndash23 324 Ann 211ndash13 324 Ann 213ndash 15 335 Ann 380ndash81 346 Prunk 49 55ndash56 57349 Prunk 115ndash16 351ndash52 Prunk 138ndash39 Sennacherib A Kirk Grayson and Jamie NovotnyThe Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681 BC) Part 1 (Winona Lake IN Ei-senbrauns 2012) no 2 24 no 3 24 no 4 22 no 16 ii 24 no 17 ii 42 no 18 ii 19rsquo


royal inscriptionsup2⁵ of either Shalmaneser V or Sargon II that was somehow acces-sible to the Hebrew scribe

As to Odedrsquos claim that the imprisonment of Hoshea ( והרסאיו ) before the fallof Samaria was based on an Assyrian source in which Shalmaneser might haveboasted that he imprisoned Hoshea in his own town (ina āliīšu esiršu)sup2⁶ this con-tradicts the biblical text Hoshea is arrested and set in prison ( אלכתיב ) not keptin confinement in his town ‟like a bird in a cagerdquo This description is used to de-note the attempts to subdue leaders who were not caught by the Assyrian kingIn the cases of confining the rulers of Damascus to their city in the days of Adad-nerari III Shalmaneser III and Tiglath-pileser III and of Sennacheribrsquos campaignagainst Judah there is no evidence of a prolonged siegeWhen the besieged cit-ies finally surrendered in the cases of Adad-nerari III Tiglath-pileser III and Sen-nacherib the inscriptions do not describe the blockades and deportations of therespective kings in connection with their cityrsquos capturesup2⁷ Odedrsquos reconstructionof events is based on the assumption that Hoshearsquos imprisonment preceded thefall of the city Oded then compares Hoshearsquos fate to that of Jehoiachin who waskept alivesup2⁸ However we simply do not know anything of Hoshearsquos fate after hisimprisonment and it would be wrong to speculate about his fate based on anenigmatic evaluation of his reign in v 2 which does not belong to the narrativeof the fall of Samaria but to the Deuteronomistic framework

The issue of transferring motifs from Assyrian royal inscriptions to the Bib-lical sphere has been en vogue since Peter Machinistrsquos seminal work on the sub-ject in the Book of Isaiah and has found many adherentssup2⁹ However the meth-ods by which these motifs would have been transferred have been questionedand the issue should be approached with caution as the studies of William Mor-row showsup3⁰ There is the possibility that the information about the fall of Samaria

Cf Ehud Ben Zvi ldquoWho Wrote the Speech of Rabshakeh and Whenrdquo JBL 109 (1990)88ndash91 Etymologically and semantically Hebrew רסא and Akkadian esēru are similar Davide Nadali ldquoSieges and Similes of Sieges in the Royal Annals the Conquest of Damas-cus by Tiglath-pileser IIIrdquo Kaskal 6 (2009) 137ndash49 Oded ldquoIssues in the Biblerdquo 4ndash6 Peter Machinist ldquoAssyria and Its Image in the First Isaiahrdquo JAOS 103 (1983) 719ndash37 Adherentsinclude eg Nili Wazana and Shawn Zelig Aster to name just a few Cf Shawn Zelig Aster ldquoTrans-mission of Neo-Assyrian Claims of Empire to Judah in the Late Eighth Century BCErdquo HUCA 78(2007) 1ndash44 Cf William S Morrow ldquoCuneiform Literacy and Deuteronomic Compositionrdquo BO 62 (2005)204ndash 13William S Morrow ldquoTribute from Judah and the Transmission of Assyrian Propagandardquoin ldquoMy Spirit at Rest in the North Countryrdquo (Zechariah 68) Collected Communications to the XXth

236 Danrsquoel Kahn

originates from an Assyrian inscription but this hypothesis was neither success-fully demonstrated by Brettler nor by Oded Concrete evidence is still lacking

As to Brettlerrsquos attempt to prove the existence of a later redactor the claimthat the syntax in v 6 תיעשתהתנשב ldquoin the ninth yearrdquo is late Biblical Hebrewsup3sup1is incorrect In contrast to Brettlerrsquos assertion the clause ldquoin the nth year of helliprdquooccurs already in the Samaria ostraca (without the n which is assimilated intothe t)sup3sup2 These clauses should therefore not be regarded as later additions Bret-tlerrsquos motivation in discarding the originality of this opening to v 6 is that if thesource had been Assyrian as Brettler suggested the text would not be dated ac-cording to the regnal years of Hosheasup3sup3 Indeed this circular reasoning is prob-lematic Furthermore Brettlerrsquos claim that the grammatical past form דכל (ldquocap-turedrdquo) in v 6 breaks the narrative sequence and is not in the convertedimperfect and that this is therefore another piece of evidence that the date isa late addition and the verb was changedsup3⁴ is not precise The verbal formopens the sequence of verbs following a time adverb just as v 3 opens withan indirect object followed by a verb in the qatal form and is followed by way-yiqtol forms

Brettler assumes that vv 3ndash4 are late editorial additions Brettlerrsquos claim thatthe opening of the verse 3 רושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעוילע does not occur in the Deu-teronomistic History is correct However he uses the occurrence of this wordorder in 2Chr 366 clearly a post-exilic text to claim that the same syntacticstructure in v 3 is a late form as well that is to say a late addition by a post-ex-ilic redactorsup3⁵ Unfortunately the occurrence of the same syntax in the post-exilicBook of Chronicles misled Brettler who took it as a sign of the lateness of thetext In both cases the sentence emphasises its adverbial complement The infor-mation focuses on the fate of the attacked king It is against him (Hoshea andJehoiakim) that the foreign king campaigned The emphasis is on the identityof the attacked king against some other option (Jehoiachin) and not on thefate of the capital city or kingdom

Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament ed Hermann Mi-chael Niemann and Matthias Augustin (Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang 2011) 183ndash92 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 117 Shmuel Ahituv and Anson F Rainey Echoes from the Past Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptionsfrom the Biblical Period (Jerusalem Carta 2008) 263 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 117 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 117 and n 38 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 115


Brettler suggests that in v 5 there is a Wiederaufnahme of v 3 where Shalma-neser king of Assyria ldquowent up againstrdquosup3⁶ However the object of the sentence isdifferent and the narrative does not resume where it digressed from its courseThus the similarity of verbs should not be seen as resumptive

Brettler dismisses the data mentioning Shalmaneser as the conqueror of Sa-maria and regards the length of the siege as unhistoricalsup3⁷ Whereas the Baby-lonian Chronicle explicitly mentions that Shalmaneser destroyed Samariasup3⁸ athree-year long siege is not incomprehensible and was rejected only becauseof Brettlerrsquos preconceptions

Finally Brettler claims that v 3 is added to conform to the biblical patternof being reliant on Egyptsup3⁹ However where can this pattern be detected exceptfor Isaiah and Jeremiah which are historical Why should the information aboutconspiring with the king of Egypt be regarded as fictitious At the end of the 8th

century BCE there is evidence of Egyptian intervention in the Levant as can belearned from Assyrian biblical and classical texts⁴⁰ and as a seal of Hosheawith Egyptian motifs testifies⁴sup1

24 The Composition of 2Kgs 189ndash 11

In a century of scholarship scholars from Hugo Winckler in 1892⁴sup2 to Bob Beck-ing in 1992⁴sup3 have based their arguments for the existence of a second sourcedescribing the Fall of Samaria on the existence of 2Kgs 189ndash 11 which partiallyparallels 2Kgs 175ndash6 and does not include 2Kgs 173ndash4 However in 1990 Chris-tof Hardmeier⁴⁴ proposed that two sources were assembled together in 2Kgs189ndash 11 on the following grounds

Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 116 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 118 Jean-Jacques Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature2004) 195 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 118 Danrsquoel Kahn ldquoThe Inscription of Sargon II at Tang-i Var and the Chronology of Dynasty 25rdquoOr 70 (2001) 1ndash 18 Andreacute Lemaire ldquoRoyal Signature Name of Israelrsquos Last King Surfaces in a Private Collec-tionrdquo BAR 21 (1995) 48ndash52 Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen 16ndash25 Becking The Fall of Samaria 47ndash53 Christof Hardmeier Prophetie im Streit vor dem Untergang Judas Erzahlkommunikative Stud-ien zur Entstehungssituation der Jesaja- und Jeremiaerzahlungen in II Reg 18ndash20 und Jer 37ndash40(Berlin de Gruyter 1990) 101ndash 108

238 Danrsquoel Kahn

a Two forms of the name of Hezekiah king of Judah occur in these three vers-es In v 9 king Hezekiahu is spelled והיקזחךלמה whereas in v 10 his name isspelled היקזח This spelling occurs as well in v 1 (the Deuteronomistic open-ing of the framework of the chapter) and in the so-called source A in 2Kgs1814ndash 16 differing from the rest of the Sennacherib-Hezekiah narrative in2Kgs 1813ndash 1937

b The conquest of Samaria using the verb דכל occurs twice In v 10a the verboccurs in the direct object suffix conjugation and again in v 10b in the pas-sive voice

c Hoshea appears twice as king of Israel One use of the title is redundantd There is a double synchronism between the years of Hezekiah and Hosheae There are two different systems of counting years in v 9 and v 10 In v 9 the

year is in absolute state followed by the number in the ordinal with a def-inite article preceding it תיעיברההנשביהיו (ldquoIt happened in the fourth year ofking Hezekiahrdquo) In v 10 the year is in the construct state and the number inthe cardinal without the article שש־תנשב (ldquoin year sixrdquo)

Hardmeier suggests that the first source can be found in vv 9ndash 10a and the sec-ond starts at v 10b According to him vv 9ndash 10a open a narrative that continueswith Sennacheribrsquos campaign against Judah in 1813 He assigns this source tothe DtrN (Nomist) who worked in the exilic or post-exilic period since he iden-tifies this narrative structure in the description of the fall of Judah and in thebooks of Jeremiah and Ezekiel⁴⁵

There are some weaknesses in Hardmeierrsquos hypothesis These can be dividedinto two aspects the reconstruction of two alleged sources and chronologicalaspects I will start with the question of two sources in 189ndash101 The reconstruction of two alleged sources

a If one eliminates the information of v 9 the Assyrian king in v 11 be-comes anonymous⁴⁶

b According to Hardmeierrsquos reconstruction the information of allegedsource 189ndash 10a derives from 2Kgs 173ndash5a whereas alleged source1810bndash11 derives from 2Kgs 175bndash6 The alleged redactor of both sour-ces in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 had either the two alleged sources of 173ndash4 and5ndash6 in front of him in which case he mixed the two sources and createdtwo new sources divided differently or he had in front of him the entire

Hardmeier Prophetie im Streit 108 Benjamin D Thomas Hezekiah and the Compositional History of the Book of Kings (TuumlbingenMohr Siebeck 2014) 350


paragraph 2Kgs 173ndash6 In that case it is difficult to understand why hediscarded a unified narrative in order to create two sources with numer-ous problems

2 Chronological aspectsa The information of 189ndash 10a is not fabricated at a late exilic date and

can be found in 175ndash6 and corroborated by the Babylonian Chroniclewhere it is explicitly claimed that Samaria was destroyed by Shalmanes-er V⁴⁷

b Hardmeier associates 189ndash 10a in which Hezekiahu is written with thelonger and older spelling to the post-exilic period whereas he regardedthe shorter writing as earlier The biblical data leads to the opposite con-clusion⁴⁸

c Hardmeierrsquos identification of a narrative opening in v 9 is correct how-ever dating it to the exilicpost-exilic period because of the occurrenceof similar syntactic structures in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel isunnecessary 2Kgs 1813Isa 361 which has a similar opening (the Sen-nacherib account) does not have to be regarded as post-exilic On thecontrary it seems to be based on early material

Consequently even though Hardmeierrsquos observations are valid and cannot beignored his division into two hypothetical sources of which at least one is exilicor even post-exilic stitched together in v 10b should be discarded The solutionis more complicated

There are several additional factors which have to be taken into accounta The chronology is Judean but the events described surprisingly deal with

Israelite historyb The pericope is detached from what precedes and from what follows⁴⁹c 189ndash 11 appear in chapter 17 with minor changes and are therefore redun-

dantd Hezekiah is named without title whereas Hoshea appears with full name

and titlee The subject changes from the king of Assyria in the singular in v 9 to an un-

mentioned plural in v 10a and then to Samaria in passive singular in v 10b

Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles 195 Sara Japhet ldquoThe Supposed Common Authorship of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemia Investi-gated Anewrdquo VT 18 (1968) 338ndash41 David Talshir ldquoA Reinvestigation of the Linguistic Relation-ship between Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiahrdquo VT 38 (1988) 175ndash76 Galo WVera Chamaza ldquoLiterarkritische Beobachtung zu 2 Koumln 18 1ndash 12rdquo BZ 33 (1989) 228

240 Danrsquoel Kahn

f It seems that v 9 originally ended in the middle of v 10 with ldquoand at the endof three years they took itrdquo

The synchronisms in 189ndash 10 are regarded as authentic original and historicalby many scholars⁵⁰ However when scrutinizing these verses I have come to theconclusion that these synchronisms cannot be relied upon to be historical for thefollowing reasonsg All the synchronisms in the Book of Kings between the kings of Israel and

Judah and vice versa have a similar syntactic form The ones who differfrom this form are suspected not to be authentic for various reasons

h All synchronisms in the Book of Kings are between the accession of a kingand the regnal years of the other king⁵sup1

i From the 35 synchronisms in the Book of Kings the only synchronisms toopen with the words שלשתנשביהיותיעיברההנשביהיו (ldquoand it happened inthe nth yearrdquo) are found in 2Kgs 181 and 9 respectively

j תנשביהיו usually opens royal narratives about wars or divine revelations tothe prophets Jeremiah Ezekiel and Zechariah⁵sup2 whereas synchronismsopen with the time clause תנשב without a narrative opening (except for2Kgs 181)

k There is no synchronism of events in the middle or end of a reign except inthis case

l The double synchronism of years four and six in a space of one verse is un-necessary and unique

m In v 9 the nominal clause opening with the feminine copula הנשהאיהלארשיךלמהלא־ןבעשוהלתיעיבשה (ldquowhich was the seventh year of king Hoshea

son of Elah of Israelrdquo) can be regarded as a gloss similar to the gloss inJer 251 which is omitted in the Septuagint⁵sup3 This gloss is inserted into v 9and creates the first synchronism

Becking The Fall of Samaria 47ndash53 For a list of the synchronisms see conveniently M Christine Tetley The Reconstructed Chro-nology of the Divided Kingdom (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2005) 35ndash39 and Hayim TadmorldquoChronologyrdquo Encyclopedia Miqraʾit 4 (1963) 251ndash54 (in Hebrew) 1Kgs 1425 2Kgs 127 2Kgs 251 Jer 251 281 321 361 9 524 Ezek 81 201 241 261 291 173020 311 321 17 3321 Zech 71 See the dating in Jer 321 2Kgs 258 and its parallel in Jer 5212 have a similar structure Theclause occurs in LXX 4 Kgdms 258 but is omitted in the Septuagint of ch 52 Note that theseparagraphs have a parallel in Jer 39 where this verse is entirely omitted The origin of these para-graphs is debated and exceeds the scope of this paper


n The clause ldquoIn the sixth year of Hezekiah which was the ninth year of kingHoshea of Israel Samaria was takenrdquo creates a strain in the sentence

From the analysis of the synchronisms in 2Kgs 189ndash 10 it becomes clear thatthey differ from the synchronisms in the Book of Kings in terms of syntax (v 9corresponds to the opening of narratives) and the use of synchronisms withevents of the middle of the reign and not with the accession At least one syn-chronism (year 6 of Hezekiah is year 9 of Hoshea) belongs orthographically tothe dating used in the Deuteronomistic strata⁵⁴

Year 9 is the year found in the original description of the fall of Samaria(2Kgs 176) and is then coupled to Hezekiahrsquos reign There is a duplication ofdata which does not add any new and significant information

As Hardmeier noticed v 9 opens with a narrative opening יהיו followed by thedate of an event dating ldquoin the fourth year of King Hezekiahurdquo ( תיעיברההנשביהיו

והיקזחךלמל )⁵⁵ The narrative opening remains but the original continuation ofthat narrative is dislocated The redactor was not interested in the events ofHezekiahrsquos fourth regnal year but wanted to contrast the fall of Samaria withthe reign of Hezekiah He mentioned Shalmaneser as the king of Assyria whocame against Samaria in 189 This information is taken from 2Kgs 173 Sincethe name of Shalmaneser has been taken from 173 where he is said to havecome up against Hoshea the omission of the latterrsquos fate from 2Kgs 18 shouldbe understood as deliberate The redactor was simply not interested in the fateof the king of Israel As a consequence the grammar of the sentence waschanged and the emphasizing structure הלעוילע was discarded However theqatal verbal form הלע of 2Kgs 173 remained unchanged Thus it can be conclud-ed that 2Kgs 189 is dependent on information from 2Kgs 173 which is regardedby scholars as a separate independent source allegedly not available to the au-thor of 2Kgs 189ndash11

The next information in the redactorrsquos source was the date found in 2Kgs175bndash6 for Samariarsquos fall in Hoshearsquos ninth regnal year after a three-yearsiege In order to connect the passages about the fall of Samaria with the dateof the fourth regnal year of Hezekiah (which was available to him) the redactorcalculated backwards three years from Hoshearsquos ninth regnal year He arrivedat year 7 of Hoshea and added it in a gloss in the corresponding grammaticalconstruction of a narrative synchronising it with the date he had for Hezekiah

לארשיךלמהלא־ןבעשוהלתיעיבשההנשהאיה He then added the information about

See the writing of the name Hezekiah היקזח in 2Kgs 181 Hardmeier Prophetie im Streit 107

242 Danrsquoel Kahn

the Fall of Samaria in year 9 of Hoshea as found in his source (2Kgs 17) By cor-relating the dates concerning the Fall of Samaria with the source about Heze-kiah he added to Hezekiahrsquos fourth regnal year the three years of siege and ar-rived at Hezekiahrsquos regnal year 6 He then synchronised it in the correspondinggrammatical construction of an official date

I concur with Hardmeier that the paragraph originally opened a narrativeHowever I do not accept his reconstruction of two sources in 189ndash 11 andthat the source of Hezekiah originally dealt with the fall of Samaria I suggestthat the opening of the narrative belonged to an alternative story namely Heze-kiahrsquos illness and miraculous recovery (2Kgs 201 Isa 381) which was movedfrom its original location to follow the narrative of Jerusalemrsquos divine salvationat a later editorial stage although chronologically it clearly preceded the eventsof 701 BCE In its current position it received the vague date םההםימיב ldquoin thosedaysrdquo

Consequently the synchronism cannot be used to correlate between the fallof Samaria and the reign of Hezekiah and thus Hezekiahrsquos accession should bedetermined to be in 715 BCE according to the data in 2Kgs 1813

Summing up this section it can be seen that 2Kgs 189ndash11 cannot be regard-ed as an original primary source It exhibits breaks in the text duplications re-dundancy abrupt change in subject glosses different styles and inconsisten-cies in the titles of kings and their orthography All these elements are crudesigns suggesting different sources stitched together Furthermore the synchron-isms do not conform to the numerous synchronisms in the Book of Kings itshould therefore be regarded as a secondary composition It seems that itwas edited and inserted into its current position by the Deuteronomistic histor-ian during the final years of the monarchy The raison drsquoetre of these synchron-isms is to relate the fall of Samaria and of the sinful king of Israel with the reignof Hezekiah the most pious Davidic king and to contrast their religious behav-iour and eventually between the fall of Samaria and the divine deliverance ofJerusalem This contrast is intended to convey an ideological message for the in-habitants of Judah namely that destruction and deportation are not unavoida-ble

The narrative cannot be regarded as historical or chronologically accuratesince Ahaz ndash a sinner in his own right ndash ruled as king of Judah during the fallof Samaria Maintaining the original chronology as it appears in 2Kgs 1813would miss the point of the didactic pericope

Let us return to the claim that the episode describing the fall of Samaria in2Kgs 173ndash6 was composed by merging two sources (either an Israelite and a Ju-dean source or an Israelite or Assyrian source with later additions by a redac-tor) based on the existence of a parallel in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 I hope I have shown


that it has scant foundation In the following I will survey the suggestions ofscholars who regarded 2Kgs 173ndash6 as a single source

3 2Kgs 173ndash6 a Coherent Text

John H Hayes and Jeffrey K Kuan⁵⁶ regard 2Kgs 173ndash6 as a coherent text andthe events described in it as consecutive They argue that there were four Assyr-ian campaigns against Samaria that Hoshea was imprisoned before the finalthree-year siege that Shalmaneser V ravaged Samaria in 725ndash724 BCE thatthe Samarians enthroned an anonymous king during the siege that Samariawas conquered by Shalmaneser just before his death and that Sargon neededto reconquer Samaria in 720 BCE

However without delving into the details of the research of Hayes and Kuansince it exceeds the scope of this paper there are chronological and historicalproblems⁵⁷ There is no evidence of an unnamed king in Samaria followingHoshea and the reliance of Hayes and Kuan on interpretations of the propheticBook of Hoshea seems exaggerated⁵⁸

4 One Main Source with Later RedactionalAdditions Corrections

Shemaryahu Talmon⁵⁹ noted that the factual account [in vv 5ndash6] did not containany formulaic references to the misdeeds of Samariarsquos rulers which abound inthe Book of Kings and are presented there as the causes of setbacks and disasterswhich befell their realm Talmon continues ldquohellip Furthermore such criticism isalso absent from the parallel version of that notation in 189ndash 11rdquo He concludesthat ldquothe doubling of the account of the conquest of Samaria together with theevident deviation of 175ndash6 from the conceptual framework of the book of Kingssuggests that this latter chronistic notion was quoted from a northern source Itmay well be a fragment of Ephraimite annalsrdquo (italics mine) The presumed Eph-

John H Hayes and Jeffrey K Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samariardquo Bib 72 (1991) 153ndash81 K Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fall Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 481 See the chapter by M Nissinen in this volume Shemaryahu Talmon ldquoPolemics and Apology in Biblical Historiography 2 Kings 1724ndash41rdquoin Shemaryahu Talmon Literary Studies in the Hebrew Bible Form and Content Collected Studies(Leiden Brill 1993) 137ndash46

244 Danrsquoel Kahn

raimite origin of 175ndash6 is supported by the absence of any synchronising formu-la of Hoshearsquos last years with the regnal years of the contemporaneous Judeanking Hezekiah Noting the Wiederaufnahme of v 5 ץראהלכברושאךלמלעיו fromv 3 רושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעוילע Talmon claims that the reference to Hoshearsquos con-spiracy with Egypt his refusal to pay tribute and his ensuing arrest by the kingof Assyria (v 4) is a secondary insert into the originally shorter text V 4 is thusregarded as an insert into an original Israelite source which included 173ndash6 andvv 24 29ndash31

However Talmon says nothing about the origin of the information of v 4Furthermore if only v 4 was a late insertion the text of v 3 ends with Hoshearsquossubmission and paying yearly tribute omitting his rebellion and resumes withthe Assyrian campaign against the entire land with no reason If v 3b should beconsidered a later addition as well it is not clear why the additional informationof v 4 was needed at all Nevertheless as noted before the mentioning of com-ing up against the king and the land should not be regarded as a Wiederauf-nahme and therefore v 4 should not be seen as an insertion

Vv 5ndash6 may come from an original Israelite source as Talmon asserts buthis reasoning that the absence of criticism for the Israelite king and his subjectsproves this can be challenged It seems highly probable that as in 2Kgs 1812there once existed an original theological reason in 2Kgs 179 for the punishmentof Israel as Ronnie Goldstein has suggested⁶⁰

Narsquoaman⁶sup1 regards 2Kgs 173ndash6 describing the fall of Samaria as a singlesource written by the Deuteronomistic Historian several hundred years afterthe events using earlier sources which Narsquoaman does not identify Accordingto Narsquoaman the Deuteronomistic Historian found only one Assyrian king ndash Shal-maneser ndash in the biblical text and mistakenly assigned the fall of Samaria tohim In fact it was Sargon who conquered Samaria as his numerous inscriptionsclaim According to the biblical data Samaria was conquered in Hoshearsquos ninthregnal year after a three year prolonged siege Narsquoaman claims that these datawere the result of historical deductions on the part of the Deuteronomistic His-torian who mistakenly interpreted his source material (which included the de-feat of Samaria three years after its rebellion and the incarceration of its king)as a prolonged siege which ended with the arrest of Hoshea in his ninth yearNarsquoaman assigned the fall of Samaria solely to the reign of Sargon Thus accord-ing to Narsquoaman the Deuteronomistic Historian got all his facts wrong

Ronnie Goldstein ldquoA Suggestion Regarding the Meaning of 2 Kings 17 9 and the Composi-tion of 2 Kings 17 7ndash23rdquo VT 63 (2013) 393ndash407 Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Backgroundrdquo 220ndash25


Gershon Galil⁶sup2 notes that the knowledge of the author of the Book of Kingswho wrote approximately 150 years after the events was only partial He did notknow that Judah remained a vassal following Sennacheribrsquos campaign in 701BCE and similarly he did not know that Hoshea was a vassal of Assyria alreadyduring the reign of Tiglath-pileser III He thus inserted v 3 describing Hoshearsquossubjugation to Shalmaneser For this he invented an alleged campaign by Shal-maneser which is not supported by extra-biblical evidence The rest of Samariarsquosdemise according to Galil was based on reliable sources originating from thebook of the chronicles of the kings of Judah Galil finds no evidence of an Israel-ite chronicle According to his reconstruction of the original Judean chroniclevv 4ndash6 existed and described the fall of Samaria according to the Judean regnaldates of Hezekiah and that the regnal years of Hoshea were edited into the textwhereas the dating according to Hezekiah was omitted along with the events ofHezekiahrsquos fifth year According to Galil two campaigns were conducted againstSamaria one in Shalmaneserrsquos reign after Hoshea rebelled in 723 BCE At the ad-vance of the Assyrian army Hoshea went out of Samaria to submit to the Assyr-ians in order to spare the kingdom but was arrested Assyria continued with thecampaign to subdue Samaria and besieged it from Shalmaneserrsquos last year He-zekiahrsquos fourth regnal year 722 BCE Upon the death of Shalmaneser the siegeprobably was eased due to lack of manpower and turned into a loose enclosurebut the Assyrian forces did not retreat

Galilrsquos reconstruction contradicts the synchronisms between the reign ofHoshea who ascended the throne in 7321 BCE and that of Hezekiah accordingto Galil Hoshearsquos seventh year is 725 BCE and his ninth year is 723 BCE Thesedates should correspond respectively to Hezekiahrsquos fourth regnal year whichGalil sets in 722 BCE and the sixth regnal year of Hezekiah who fell accordingto Galil in 720 BCE

In summary scholars who claim that the pericope describing the fall of Sa-maria originates from a single source suggest numerous mistakes and late inter-polations in the biblical text in order to uphold their theories and fit them to theextra-biblical sources

Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of Samariardquo CBQ 57(1995) 52ndash65

246 Danrsquoel Kahn

5 The Literary Solution

51 2Kgs 173ndash6 as a Literary Composition

I concur with Ernst Wuumlrthwein⁶sup3 and Trevor R Hobbs⁶⁴ that in vv 3ndash4 the authorof the pericope concentrated on the deeds of Hoshea his relations with the kingsof Assyria and Egypt and eventually his fate whereas vv 5ndash6 rather than re-counting a different series of events which followed those in vv 3ndash4 go overthe same events but this time with the emphasis on the effect of the invasionby the Assyrians on the city land and population of Samaria This can be dem-onstrated by following the verbs and pronouns in the different verses in vv 3ndash4verbs and pronouns describe Hoshea in the third person singular וילע יהיו בשיו

חלש הלעהאלו והרצעיו והרסאיו After describing the fate of the king during the fallof the city in Hoshearsquos ninth regnal year (7243 BCE) the author turns in v 5 todescribe the fate of the city of Samaria in the third person feminine הילערציו Fi-nally the author describes in v 6 the fate of the inhabitants of Samaria who areexiled to the Assyrian realm in the third person plural בשיוהרושאלארשי־תאלגיו

ידמירעוןזוגרהנרובחבוחלחבםתא This analysis solves all problems raised by schol-ars and enables a historical reconstruction of events in the days of Shalmanes-er V

52 A Stylistic Parallel in Sennacheribrsquos Royal Inscriptions

A fascinating parallel to this literary division of focus on the king the town andthe inhabitants can be found in the royal inscriptions of Sennacherib of Assyriaand his third campaign to the West As Tadmor has shown in his discussionabout the historiographic writing of Sennacheribrsquos scribes the third campaignof Sennacherib can be divided into six episodes These episodes were not neces-sarily organised in a chronological or geographical order but in a literary oneTadmor showed that four elements recur in these episodesa The fate of the rebellious king and kingship (the king either escapes is pun-

ished receives pardon remains in office or is reinstalled)b The fate of his kingdom and its townsc Taxes are levied on the re-subjugated towns and

Ernst Wuumlrthwein Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige 1 Koumln 17ndash2 Koumln 25 (Goumlttingen Vanderhoeck ampRuprecht 1984) 393ndash94 Trevor R Hobbs 2 Kings (Waco TX Word Books 1985) 225ndash26


d The fate of the inhabitants is recounted⁶⁵

The literary composition and order of 2Kgs 173ndash6 is very similar Firstly thedeeds of the king are described from his subjugation through his rebelliousplotting open rebellion and final imprisonment No mention is made of a sub-sequent king of Israel since Samaria was turned into a province without a localking Consequently in Sargonrsquos inscriptions the Samaritans are rebelling andthere is no mention of a king Secondly the fate of the kingdom and its capitalis described The land is destroyed and the capital city besieged until it is con-quered Thirdly no mention of yearly taxes is made after the conquest Andfourthly the inhabitants of Samaria are exiled and resettled in the Assyrian Em-pire

6 The Origin of the Text

In the following section I will summarise what can and cannot be said about theorigin of the text Admittedly I cannot identify the origin and this discussionwill be purely hypothetical

The information is dated to the reign of Hoshea It describes the politicalevents leading to the demise of the Kingdom of Israel These events are not de-scribed in a derogative fashion

As discussed above it seems that 2Kgs 173ndash6 is not composed from two dif-ferent chronicles either from Israel or from Judah Furthermore chronicles (atleast the Assyrian prototypes which are known to us) are normally shorter anddo not elaborate upon details There is no chronological listing of events accord-ing to the kingrsquos years (2Kgs 189ndash 10 is shown to be a fictitious chronology) Fur-thermore there is no clear annual development of the events The events of thebeginning of the reign the submission the conspiracy with Egypt and the openrebellion are not dated and the events of year 8 during the siege are entirelymissing Finally the events are not chronologically ordered as eg the impris-onment of Hoshea is mentioned before the capture of the city

Annals (at least the Assyrian annals) typically herald the deeds of the kingvictoriously in the first person singular boasting about the kingrsquos accomplish-ments This is not the case in 2Kgs 173ndash6 It seems therefore that the source

Hayim Tadmor ldquoSennacheribrsquos Campaign to Judah Historical and Historiographical Consid-erationsrdquo in ldquoWith My Many Chariots I Have Gone Up the Heights of the Mountainsrdquo Historicaland Literary Studies on Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel ed Mordechai Cogan (Jerusalem IsraelExploration Society 2011) 662ndash72

248 Danrsquoel Kahn

is not extracted from Israelite royal annals at least if they would have followedthe known Mesopotamian template

The composition exhibits literary traits and it is clearly not ordered chrono-logically It may derive from a sort of summary inscription of the reign organisedin a literary form

Should the narrative be regarded as having an Assyrian Israelite or Judeansource As for the claim that the information derives from an alleged Assyrianroyal inscription of Shalmaneser V⁶⁶ describing the Fall of Samaria ndash there isno concrete evidence for the existence of such a text on which 2Kgs 171ndash6could have been based However if Ronnie Goldstein⁶⁷ is correct in identifyingan early strata in 2Kgs 177ndash23 using Neo-Assyrian calques in 2Kgs 179 it cancautiously be accepted that the original narrative imitated Neo-Assyrian treatyterminology reflecting Israelite theology which blamed the Kingdom of Israelfor political covenantal trespass The Israelites did not obey the Lord andbroke his covenant and for this were severely punished Similar attempts to ex-plain Israelrsquos demise can be found in 2Kgs 1812 Comparable accusations wereforwarded in Ezek 1711ndash21 by a Judean author against Zedekiah the last Judeanking suggesting that he broke the covenant with god by rebelling against Bab-ylonia

I would therefore like to suggest cautiously that 2Kgs 173ndash6 may have beencomposed by Israelite court scribes in the short period following the destructionwhen Israel became an Assyrian province and before it was reconquered by Sar-gon who radically changed its demography and administration Such a compo-sition can be compared to the description of the end of the Kingdom of Judah byits own scribes The narrative was eventually reworked and incorporated into theBook of Kings by Judean scribeswho stressed the cultic abominations and trans-gressions which according to them brought about the downfall of the kingdomof Israel

See the suggestions by Brettler and Oded discussed above in sections 22 and 23 Cf alsoNovotnyrsquos chapter in this volume Goldstein ldquoA Suggestion Regarding the Meaning of 2 Kings 17 9rdquo


Christoph Levin

In Search of the Original Biblical Recordof the Assyrian Conquest of Samaria

1 Introduction Two Parallel Records

The conquest of Samaria by the Assyrian great king is recorded two times in theBook of Kings The first account is to be found in 2Kgs 173ndash6 in the framework ofthe section that deals with king Hoshea of Israel This is the place where onewould expect it The second account in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 is part of the section thatrelates the history of king Hezekiah of Judah (Fig 1)

The second record is usually seen as secondary and rightly so The sectiondisrupts the connection that originally existed between the note about Heze-

Fig 1 Synoptic table presenting the text of 2Kgs 173ndash6 (first column) and 2Kgs 189ndash12(second column) Prepared by the author

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-012

kiahrsquos rebellion against the Assyrian king in 187b and the account of Sennacher-ibrsquos campaign which is given from 1813 onward ldquoHe rebelled against the kingof Assyria and would not serve him [hellip] In the fourteenth year of King HezekiahSennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah andtook themrdquo These two phrases once followed one another immediatelysup1

In most parts 189ndash 11 corresponds almost verbatim with 173 5ndash6 This isbest explained by direct copying It raises the question of why a record was re-peated which every reader had already come across in the preceding section ofthe book The answer might be found in those phrases that go beyond the Vor-lage and have no equivalent in it the synchronistic dates in 189 10 and thetheological comment in v 12

2 The Origin of 2Kgs 189ndash12

The first excess is the date of Shalmaneserrsquos campaign in v 9 It was put in frontof the original beginning of the record

שיךלמהלא־ןבעשוהלתיעיבשההנשהאיהוהיקזחךלמלתיעיברההנשביהיו רושא־ךלמרסאנמלשהלעלאר

In the fourth year of king Hezekiah which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king ofIsrael Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up

A similar synchronism is added to the date of the conquest in v 10

שיךלמעשוהלעשת־תנשאיההיקזחלשש־תנשבםינששלשהצקמgtהדכליו ןורמשהדכלנלאר gt

ltAnd he captured itgtsup2 at the end of three years In the sixth year of Hezekiah which was theninth year of Hoshea king of Israel Samaria was captured

The note in 188 about a great victory over the Philistines ldquocannot be attributed to an authen-tic sourcerdquo either as Martin Noth The Deuteronomistic History (Sheffield Sheffield AcademicPress 1981 trans J Doull et al) 132 n 17 stated The verse begins similarly to v 4 compare

םיתשלפ־תאהכה־אוה ldquohe was the one who smote the Philistinesrdquo with תומבה־תאריסהאוה ldquohewas the one who removed the high placesrdquo This is meaningful Most probably the victoryover the Philistines was invented because Hezekiahrsquos piety should not go unrewarded The com-bination הילובג־תאוהזע ldquoGaza and its territoryrdquo is ldquoobjectionable and we should expect םלובג rdquoso Bernhard Stade and Friedrich Schwally The Books of Kings (Leipzig Hinrich 1904) 269 Itmay be borrowed from Judg 118 הלובג־תאוהזע The expression רצבמריע־דעםירצונלדגממ ldquofromwatchtower to fortified cityrdquo (which is repeated in 2Kgs 179) is reminiscent of Josh 1929

רצ־רצבמריע־דעו ldquoto the fortified city of Tyrerdquo The Qerecirc הדכליו ldquoand they captured itrdquo is better vocalized as הדכליו ldquoand he captured itrdquo in ac-cordance with the Septuagint the Peshitta and the Vulgate However the Antiochian text reads

252 Christoph Levin

In the second case there can again be little doubt that the synchronism is anexpansion compared to 175bndash6

ןורמש־תארושא־ךלמדכלעשוהלתיעישתהתנשבםינששלשהילערציוןורמשלעיו

He came up to Samaria and he besieged it for three years In the ninth year of Hoshea theking of Assyria captured Samaria

In 175b the duration of the siege is given with ldquothree yearsrdquo In 1810 the durationhas become the date of the conquest ldquoAnd he captured it at the end ( הצקמ ) ofthree yearsrdquo In order to incorporate the synchronism the verb הדכליו ldquoand hecaptured itrdquo had to be repeated towards the end of the verse הדכלנ ldquoit was cap-turedrdquo The doublet shows the secondary expansion In the same process thesubject רושא־ךלמ was moved to v 11 compare שי־תארושא־ךלמלגיו הרושאלאר in1811 with שי־תאלגיו הרושאלאר in 176 ldquoAnd he the king of Assyria carried Israelaway to Assyriardquo

There is one difficulty remaining It relates to the form of the dating in 176Instead of עשוהלתיעישתהתנשב ldquoin the ninth year of Hosheardquo one should expecteither עשוהלתיעישתההנשביהיו ldquoand it happened in the ninth year of Hosheardquo(compare 189) or עשוהלעשת־תנשב ldquoin year nine of Hosheardquo as in 1810sup3I would prefer the latter for the original reading Possibly this was the readingat the time when the text was copied to 1810 and it was later changed intothe present form

Why was the record of the conquest of Samaria expanded in such a way Thesynchronisms relate the reign of the king of Judah to that of the king of Israel Itis emphasized that the conquest of Samaria took place exactly at the time whenHezekiah was king in Judah Compared to 2Kgs 17 the version of 2Kgs 18 depicts asharp contrast between the two kings the wicked Hoshea who was punishedand the pious Hezekiah who was saved

This is quite in line with v 12 where a reason is added to explain why Israelhas been carried away to Assyria

ושעאלוועמשאלוהוהידבעהשמהוצרשא־לכתאותירב־תאורבעיוםהיהלאהוהילוקבועמש־אלרשאלע

Because they did not obey the voice of Yahweh their God but transgressed his covenant allthat Moses the servant of Yahweh commanded they neither obeyed nor observed

the plural καὶ κατελάβοντο see Natalio Fernaacutendez Marcos and Joseacute Ramoacuten Busto Saiz El TextoAntioqueno de la Biblia griega 1ndash2 Reyes (Madrid Instituto de Filologiacutea del CSIC 1992) 136 There are more examples of the irregular style however see 2Kgs 251 Jer 281 Keticircb 321 Keticircb462 5159 Ezra 78 and GKC sect134p

In Search of the Original Biblical Record of the Assyrian Conquest of Samaria 253

The addition of v 12 was most clearly identified by Albert Šanda ldquoThis verse cer-tainly does not come from R [= the editor of the Book of Kings] In this contextone expects an objective report with no moralizing remarksrdquo⁴ The note adds tothe historical details a theological rationale Israel has sinned and therefore hadto suffer its awful fate

The phrases used for this comment are familiar from the latest literary layersof the Book of Deuteronomy and from those books of the Old Testament whichpresuppose Deuteronomy הוהילוקבעמשאל ldquonot to obey the voice of Yahwehrdquomarks the disobedience to the Deuteronomic law and later to the Torah in gen-eral⁵ The earliest instances relating to the divine law are to be found in Deut281 15⁶ הוהיתירברבע ldquoto transgress the covenant of Yahwehrdquo⁷ (instead of theregular תירברפה ldquoto break the covenantrdquo⁸) presents the late concept in whichYahwehrsquos covenant and the Torah are one and the same thing

This is made clearer still by the apposition הוהידבעהשמהוצרשא־לכתא ldquoallthat Moses the servant of Yahweh commandedrdquo The phrase is parallel to Josh17 13 831 33 1112 222 5 1Chr 634 All of these instances belong to the literarysphere of the Priestly code or to the post-priestly Deuteronomism roughly speak-ing The title הוהידבע as applied to Moses⁹ Joshuasup1⁰ and Davidsup1sup1 is late through-out This part of the verse may be a later clarification by another hand It isadded without a copula The resumption of ועמש־אלרשאלע ldquobecause they didnot obeyrdquo by ושעאלוועמשאל ldquothey neither obeyed nor observedrdquo at the endof the verse also supports this possibility

The comment wants to assure the reader that the conquest of Samaria wasdue to Israelrsquos sins The defeat is interpreted as having been a divine punish-

Albert Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige vol 2 (Muumlnster Aschendorff 1912) 244 (my translation)Šanda continues ldquoR has added his judgment already in 1721ndash23 The content [= of v 12] is veryreminiscent of 1734ndash40rdquo Num 1422 Deut 820 923 2815 45 62 Josh 56 Judg 22 20 610 1Sam 1215 1519 28181Kgs 2036 2Kgs 1812 Jer 325 728 912 2221 3223 403 4221 437 4423 cf Zeph 32 Ps10625 Dan 910 14 For the origin of the phrase see Christoph Levin Die Verheiszligung des neuen Bundes (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1985) 108 n 136 Deut 172 2911 Josh 711 15 2316 2Kgs 1812 Jer 3418 Hos 67 81 תירבררפ hi ldquoto break a covenantrdquo profanepolitically 1Kgs 15192Chr 163 Isa 338 Ezek 171516 18 19 related to the covenant with Yahweh on the human side Gen 1714 Lev 2615 Deut3116 20 Isa 245 Jer 1110 3132 Ezek 1659 447 on the divine side Lev 2644 Judg 21 Jer1421 Zech 1110 cf Jer 3320 f Deut 345 Josh 11 13 15 831 33 1112 126 138 147 187 222 4 5 2429 2Kgs 1812 2Chr 13246 Josh 2429 Judg 28 Ps 181 361

254 Christoph Levin

mentWith this statement we have a relative dating for the section 2Kgs 189ndash12as a whole ldquoTherefore the entire group of verses 9ndash12 is the work of a later post-exilic redactor who according to his way of thinking and his language is in linewith the author of 1734ndash40rdquosup1sup2 It does not go back to the edition of the Deuter-onomistic History in the 6th century BCE but was added much later towards theera when the Book of Kings had become the Vorlage for Chronicles and had beensubmitted to the theological doctrine of divine retribution which dominatesChronicles throughout This doctrine can occasionally be observed in the earlierhistorical books as well however mostly in the form of literary additions

3 The Later Additions in 2Kgs 173ndash6

There is also a large part of the Vorlage 173ndash6 that is missing in 189ndash 12sup1sup3

רשארשקעשוהברושא־ךלמאצמיו4החנמולבשיודבעעשוהול־יהיורושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעוילע3והרסאיורושאךלמוהרצעיו]הנשבהנשכרושאךלמלהחנמהלעה־אלו[םירצמ־ךלמאוס־לאםיכאלמחלשםינששלשהילערציוןורמשלעיוץראה־לכברושא־ךלמלעיו5אלכתיב

3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria and Hoshea became his vassal andpaid him tribute 4 And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea for he had sent mes-sengers to So king of Egypt [and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done yearby year]sup1⁴ and the king of Assyria restrained him and bound him in prison 5 And the king ofAssyria came up in all the land and came up to Samaria and besieged it for three years

In the additional text it is related that Shalmaneserrsquos campaign was in the firstinstance directed against king Hoshea himself As a consequence Hoshea waspressed into vassalage and had to pay tribute every year After some years Hosh-ea rebelled against his Assyrian overlord He tried to establish diplomatic tieswith some Egyptian king Shalmaneser put him into prison and came up againstthe whole country

This outline of the events confronts us with a number of difficulties(1) In his inscriptions king Tiglath-pileser III claims that Hoshea came to

rule as his vassalsup1⁵ The assertion of 2Kgs 173 that Hoshearsquos vassalage had startedonly with Shalmaneser contradicts what is known from the Assyrian records

Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige vol 2 244ndash45 (my translation) In the following translation the minuses of 189ndash 12 and the pluses of 173ndash6 are marked byitalics Verse 4aβ is a later expansion For the source-critical arguments see below Summary Inscription 4 17ndash9 and Summary Inscription 9 rev 9ndash 10 text Hayim TadmorThe Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences


(2) Though the verb הלע is repeated no less than three times ( הלע in v 3 andלעיו twice in v 5) there are no signs that the text wants to tell us of more than one

campaign of Shalmaneser This is in line with the date given by the parallel re-cord in 2Kgs 189

(3) However it contradicts what is said in 174 namely that Hoshea paid histribute ldquoyear by yearrdquo ( הנשבהנשכ ) This seems to indicate that several yearspassed between the beginning of Hoshearsquos vassalage and Shalmaneserrsquos cam-paign against Samaria

(4) From the sequence as the text tells it one gets the impression that kingHoshea was put into prison prior to the siege of Samaria This raises the questionof who would have reigned in the city for the three years of the siege and couldhave led the resistance against the Assyrian campaign ldquoIt is [hellip] highly improb-able that Israel remained for three years without a king after the deposition ofHoshea and as a matter of fact v 6 states that the fall of the capital took placelsquoin the ninth year of Hoshearsquo ie in his ninth reigning yearrdquosup1⁶

(5) There is an awkward doublet at the beginning of v 5 רושא־ךלמלעיוהילערציוןורמשלעיוץראה־לכב ldquoAnd the king of Assyria came up in all the land

and he came up to Samaria and he besieged itrdquo This is all the more strikingsince Shalmaneser must already have been in the land in order to bind Hosheain prison as is said immediately before in v 4

(6) The style of the passage is clumsy to some degree In v 5a the subjectרושא־ךלמ is unnecessarily repeated though it does not change Hebrew narratives

usually try to avoid such redundancy(7) These observations are not due to modern criticism only but are mirrored

already in the textual tradition that in the case of the Old Greek or its Vorlagedeviates from the Masoretic text quite remarkably different to the surroundingversessup1⁷

In order to solve these problems Hugo Winckler proposed what could becalled a documentary hypothesis His idea was that two different sources had

and Humanities 1994) 140 and 188 = Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptionsof Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) no 42 and no 49 translation James B Pritchard (ed) AncientNear Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press1955 2nd edition) 284 William W Hallo (ed) The Context of Scripture vol 2 Monumental In-scriptions from the Biblical World (Leiden Brill 2000) nos 117C and 117F Mordechai CoganThe Raging Torrent Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Israel (Jerusa-lem Carta 2015 2nd edition) 73 and 68 Charles F Burney Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Kings (Oxford Clarendon 1903)328 See the chapter of Timo Tekoniemi in this volume

256 Christoph Levin

been interwoven in 2Kgs 173ndash6 both of them conveying the same historicalevent but from different perspectivessup1⁸ ldquoIt seems easiest to suppose that thefirst of the two biblical sections [ie in 2Kgs 173ndash6] presents a combination oftwo records of the same event taken from two different sources in such a waythat ch 173ndash4 is a second narrative of the events recorded in 175bndash6 the lattertaken from the same source as 189ndash 11 with which it agrees almost word forword At the least this assumption would solve all of the contradictions and dif-ficultiesrdquosup1⁹ The one of these accounts which according to Winckler is to befound in vv 5ndash6 relates the rebellion of king Hoshea as well as his captureby Shalmaneser The other account tells the conquest of Samaria roughly inthe same form as it is also preserved in the parallel 189ndash 10Winckler maintainsthat both records are reliable in terms of history Hoshearsquos rebellion having beenthe reason for Shalmaneserrsquos campaign From this follows that the capture ofking Hoshea and the conquest of Samaria actually fell at the same time Sofor Winckler the two accounts are to be read as parallel versions other thanthe present text wherein the editor of the Book of Kings set them in a sequencewhen he merged the two sources into a single record

In accordance with the Assyrian sources ndash and contrary to 2Kgs 173 ndashWinck-ler holds that Hoshea came to the throne as a vassal of Tiglath-pileser In order tosolve the contradictionWinckler states ldquoThe whole difficulty would disappear ifwe assume that the editor read דבעולהיהו instead of דבעוליהיו in 173 The mean-ing of his source would have been lsquoHoshea became king Against him came upShalmaneser because he was his vassal and had to pay him tribute But the kingof Assyria found treachery in him etc and bound him in prisonrsquordquosup2⁰ Unfortunate-ly this reading has no basis in the textual transmission as Winckler himself ad-mitssup2sup1 moreover as Charles F Burney stated ldquosuch a construction is impossi-blerdquosup2sup2 followed by Bernhard Stade and Friedrich Schwally ldquoWincklerrsquos [hellip]

Hugo Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidung der Koumlnigsbuumlcherrdquo in id AlttestamentlicheUntersuchungen (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1892) 1ndash54 esp 16ndash25 Wincklerrsquos hypothesis was acceptedby Immanuel Benzinger Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Freiburg iB Mohr Siebeck 1899) 172ndash73 byBurney Notes 328ndash29 and by John Gray I amp II Kings A Commentary (London SCM Press1970 2nd edition) 642 ldquoVerses 3 f probably from the Annals of Israel vv 5 f from the Annalsof Judah (cf 189ndash11) both summarized with vv 3bndash4a in loose parenthesisrdquo Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidungrdquo 20 (my translation) Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidungrdquo 22 (my translation) Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidungrdquo 22 n 3 ldquoIt is improbable that there is a mistakein our textual tradition because all recensions MT as well as LXX witness יהיו rdquo Burney Notes 329 who nevertheless keeps Wincklerrsquos source critical hypothesis


conjecture [hellip] maltreats the Hebrew language for Hosea was his vassal is not inHebrew דבעולעשוההיהו rdquosup2sup3

However Wincklerrsquos hypothesis is not completely obsolete He rightly as-sumes that vv 3ndash4 give another view of the events around the conquest of Sa-maria But his solution is wrong The other version does not go back to a differ-ent source It constitutes a later comment on what was transmitted in one singlesource It is an annotation that tells what should have happened for theologicalreasons but as we know from the Assyrian sources never happened in historyThose elements of the text that are missing in 189ndash10 did not exist at the timewhen the text had been copied there They are scribal additions

Above we have seen that the version of 2Kgs 18 is of very late origin becausev 12 shows features that are near to Chronicles This is true also of 173bndash5aWhereas in 2Kgs 18 the emphasis is on the contrast between the two kingsthe pious Hezekiah on the one hand and the wicked Hoshea on the otherand the different fate of these two it is no surprise that the editor who added173bndash5a also focused on Hoshearsquos personal guilt and his fate

The addition follows the theological doctrine of retribution Someonersquos fatehad to be in line with someonersquos behavior Because Hoshea was punished by theAssyrian king he must have sinned against the Assyrian king The scribe sug-gested that Hoshea rebelled against Shalmaneser In order to demonstratethis it is at first said that he became Shalmaneserrsquos vassal דבעעשוהול־יהיו Hoshea submitted to his overlord by paying tribute החנמולבשיו The one whoadded these details did not care whether the sequence of events would be pos-sible in terms of history He simply wanted to sketch the initial situation that waslater changed by Hoshearsquos rebellion

The phrase -ברשקאצמ ldquoto find conspiracy in someonerdquo occurs only oncemore in Jer 119 ldquoConspiracy is found ( רשקאצמנ ) among the people of Judahand the inhabitants of Jerusalemrdquo In the historical books except for 2Kgs 174the noun רשק is used exclusively for a conspiracy against the king of Israel orJudahsup2⁴ To indicate a rebellion against the Assyrian or Babylonian overlordthe verb דרמ is used (2Kgs 187 241 20) The scribe deviates from the terminologyof the Book of Kings in favor of the language of prophecy He indicates thatHoshearsquos rebellion against the Assyrian king was also directed against Yahwehsup2⁵

Stade and Schwally The Books of Kings 260 2Sam 1512 1Kgs 1620 2Kgs 1114 1221 1419 151 30 The Septuagint (kaige-recension) translates ἀδικία = רקש ldquodeceptionrdquo thus emphasizing thetheological statement that may be implied See Alfred Rahlfs and Robert Hanhart (eds) Septua-ginta Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes (Stuttgart Deutsche Bibelgesell-schaft 2006 2nd edition) sub loco

258 Christoph Levin

In order to illustrate Hoshearsquos disloyalty it is said that he sent messengers tothe Egyptian king of that time םירצמ־ךלמאוס־לאםיכאלמחלשרשא ldquofor he has sentmessengers to Sōʾ king of Egyptrdquo The purpose of the delegation is not indicat-ed but can easily be supplemented by the reader Ahaz asked the king of Egyptfor an alliance against the Assyrian king and offered him his submission Thisaction was seen as a severe fault by the theologians of the late Second TemplePeriod We know from the Book of Chronicles that it meant sinning against theGod Yahweh in a very strong way if the kings of Israel and Judah made allianceswith foreign kings As a consequence each attempt is punished by military de-feat or disastersup2⁶

This doctrine may be labeled Koalitionsverbot (ldquoprohibition of coalition withforeign powersrdquo) It also found its way into the Book of Kings In 2Kgs 167 it issaid that king Ahaz of Judah called Tiglath-pileser for help when he was attackedby king Rezin of Aram and king Pekah of Israel Here we read nearly the sameexpression as in 173

ךלמףכמוםרא־ךלמףכמינעשוהוהלעינאךנבוךדבערמאלרושא־ךלמרסלפתלגת־לאםיכאלמזחאחלשיושי ילעםימוקהלאר

And Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria saying I am your servant andyour son Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Aram and from the hand ofthe king of Israel who are attacking me

This verse is a late addition to the record about Ahazrsquos submission to Tiglath-pi-leser when he was attacked by Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel The originaltext is to be found in 2Kgs 165a bα 8 9aβγ b ldquoThen Rezin king of Aram andPekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to wage war on Jerusalemand they besieged Ahaz [hellip] So Ahaz took the silver and gold that was foundin the house of Yahweh and in the treasures of the kingrsquos house and sent a pres-ent to the king of Assyria [hellip] And the king of Assyria marched up against Dam-ascus and took it carrying its people captive [hellip] and he killed Rezinrdquo The ad-dition stresses that with Ahazrsquos submission to the Assyrian king he refused thepromise that Yahweh had given to David ldquoI will be his father and he shall be mysonrdquo (2Sam 714) This behavior was counted as a severe fault

The same doctrine is also to be found in the Book of Isaiah as well as in theBook of Hoshea ldquoEphraim is like a dove silly and without sense calling to

Older research was already aware of this doctrine In more recent times it was especially in-vestigated by Tetsuo Yamaga ldquoKoumlnig Joschafat und seine Auszligenpolitik in den ChronikbuumlchernrdquoAJBI 27 (2001) 59ndash 154


Egypt going to Assyriardquo (Hos 711 cf 122)sup2⁷ ldquoWoe to the rebellious children saysYahweh who carry out a plan but not mine and who make a league but not ofmy spirit that they may add sin to sin who set out to go down to Egypt withoutasking for my counsel to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seekshelter in the shadow of Egyptrdquo (Isa 301ndash2 cf 311) There are strong reasons toassume that statements like these do not go back to the prophets of the 8th cen-tury but originate in the time of the Chronicler ie in the Hellenistic era

No one knows who םירצמ־ךלמאוס ldquoSōʾ king of Egyptrdquo could have been ldquoNoknown king of Egypt at this time (ca 725 BC) bore this name a circumstance allthe more remarkable in view of the transparent nature of all the other Old Testa-ment allusions to the names of Egyptian rulersrdquosup2⁸ The guessing game began al-ready in the Antiochian text of the Septuagint (or its Hebrew Vorlage) whichreads διότι ἀπέστειλεν ἀγγέλους πρὸς Aδραμέλεχ τὸν Αἰθίοπα τὸν κατοικοῦνταἐν Αἰγύπτῳ ldquofor he sent messengers to Adrammelech the Ethiopian who dweltin Egyptrdquosup2⁹ With high probability this reading rests on Midrashic assumptionssup3⁰Possibly it is based on 2Kgs 1937 where it is said that Adrammelech killed kingSennacherib of Assyria in combination with 2Kgs 199 where it is said that theking of Assyria heard that king Tirhaka of Ethiopia went out to fight againsthim The details may still reflect the original text which tells of an Egyptianking Therefore the title ldquokingrdquo is left out and Adrammelech though being anEthiopian should have dwelled in Egypt

James A Montgomery and Henry Snyder Gehman The Books of Kings (Edinburgh TampT Clark1951) 465 ldquoThese shifting alliances of the day now with Assyria now with Egypt are illustratedin the prophet Hoshearsquos scornful references (513 78 11 16 89 115 122 144)rdquo It is highly ques-tionable whether these statements go back to the prophet himself John Day ldquoThe Problem of lsquoSo King of Egyptrsquo in 2 Kings xvii 4rdquo VT 42 (1992) 289ndash301esp 289 Day presents a survey of the proposals produced so far He finally argues in favor ofthe place name of Sais the capital city of Tefnakht This possibility was however rejectedwith strong arguments by among others Bernd Schipper ldquoWer war lsquoSoʾ Koumlnig von Aumlgypten᾽(2 Koumln 174)rdquo BN 92 (1998) 71ndash84 esp 74ndash75 Fernaacutendez Marcos and Busto Saiz El Texto Antioqueno 131ndash2 The reading is shared by theCodex Vindobonensis see Bonifatius Fischer ldquoPalimpsestus Vindobonensis A Revised Editionof L115 for Samuel-Kingsrdquo BIOSCS 16 (1983) 13ndash87 esp 86 Andreacutes Piquer Otero ldquoWhat Text to Edit The Oxford Hebrew Bible Edition of 2 Kings171ndash23rdquo in After Qumran Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts ndash the HistoricalBooks ed Hans Ausloos Beacuteneacutedicte Lemmelijn and Julio Trebolle Barrera (Leuven Peeters2012) 227ndash43 esp 233ndash35 still looks for some historical basis ndash to my mind this would be mis-conceiving the assumptive nature of the text

260 Christoph Levin

It is mostly suggested that the name Sōʾ refers to Pharaoh Osorkon IVsup3sup1 Butthere is no clear indication for this suggestion nor any linguistic support for itMost probably the glossator did not refer to an individual king The figure of thisPharaoh may be pure fantasy Some scholars read his name Sōʾ as an abbreviat-ed form of the Egyptian word for ldquokingrdquo nj-śwt rarr nśwt rarr nśw rarr Sōʾsup3sup2 Thishowever cannot be proven eithersup3sup3 In any case we do not have to search inthe 8th century BCE because the note in 2Kgs 174 originates in the late Persianor early Hellenistic era

In v 4aβ there are some divergences in the textual transmissionWhereas theHebrew text reads הנשבהנשכרושאךלמלהחנמהלעה־אלו ldquoand he offered no tributeto the king of Assyria as he had done year by yearrdquosup3⁴ the Antiochian textsup3⁵ pres-ents some explication καὶ ἦν Ὡσῆε φέρων δῶρα τῷ βασιλεῖ ἀσσυρίων ἐνιαυτὸνκατrsquo ἐνιαυτὸν ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐνιαυτῷ ἐκείνῳ οὐκ ἤνεγκεν αὐτῷ μαναά ldquoAnd Hosheabrought gifts to the king of Assyria year by year but that year he offered no trib-ute to himrdquo This version seems to be much more natural since in v 3 it is saidonly that Hoshea paid tribute to the king of Assyria ( החנמולבשיו ) which does notunequivocally imply that he was to do so every year However the lectio longioratque facilior hardly presents the original reading It is rather an indication thatthis detail of the rebellion was added only later Again the terminology is signif-icant The expression החנמהלעה־אל ldquohe did not offer tributerdquo is strange in thiscontext because החנמהלע hi is otherwise used exclusively for the grain-offeringto Yahwehsup3⁶ So we may conclude that this part of v 4 is a still later addition

Hoshea is said to have been punished for his disloyalty by Shalmaneserאלכתיבוהרסאיורושאךלמוהרצעיו ldquothe king of Assyria restrained him and bound

See (among many others) Manfred Goumlrg ldquoSordquo Neues Bibellexikon vol 3 ed Manfred Goumlrg(Zuumlrich Benziger 2001) 622 Schipper ldquoWer war Soʾrdquo 77ndash79 This was first suggested by Herbert Donner ldquoThe Separate States of Israel and Judahrdquo inIsraelite and Judean History ed John H Hayes and J Maxwell Miller (London SCM Press1977) 381ndash434 esp 433 followed by Rolf Krauss ldquoSō Koumlnig von Aumlgypten ndash ein Deutungsvor-schlagrdquo MDOG 110 (1978) 49ndash54 who added some linguistic support based on late evidenceinvolving the history of language (ldquoRuumlckschluszlig der auf sprachgeschichtlich jungen Belegen ber-uhtrdquo 54) In any case the presupposition that ldquoSōʾ is attested for the time around 725 BCErdquo (50my translation) is to be doubted because 2Kgs 174 is historically unreliable See the strong objections referred to by Schipper ldquoWer war Soʾrdquo 80ndash81 The Hebrew text is supported by the kaige recension of the Septuagint see Rahlfs and Han-hart Septuaginta sub loco For הנשבהנשכ the Greek text reads ἐν τῷ ἐνιαυτῷ ἐκείνῳ It is doubt-ful whether this reading goes back to a different Vorlage ( איהההנשב ) According to the edition by Fernaacutendez Marcos and Busto Saiz El Texto Antioqueno 132 Exod 309 4029 Lev 1420 Josh 2223 Isa 576 663 Jer 1412 See Otto Thenius Die Buumlcherder Koumlnige (Leipzig Weidmannrsquosche Buchhandlung 1849) 369 ldquo הלעה ] it is to be noted that thisword is otherwise used exclusively for offeringrdquo (my translation)


him in prisonrdquo Hoshea was bound that means he had to share the fate that kingJehoahaz suffered from Pharaoh Necho (2Kgs 2333) king Zedekiah from Nebu-chadnezzar (2Kgs 257) and king Manasseh from the commanders of the Assyrianarmy (2Chr 3311) Notably enough in each of these four cases exactly the sameverbal form is used והרסאיו The editor does not say what happened to Hosheafurther on but the reader of the Bible could appreciate that the other three kingswere deported This was also the case with king Jehoiachin who is said in 2Kgs2527 to have finally been released from prison ( אלכתיב )

All in all these are clear indications that the longer record of 2Kgs 173ndash5 aswe now read it is to be understood as a theological comment in narrative formoriginating around the time when the Book of Chronicles was about to be writ-ten The details given are not intended to be read as historical information

4 The Original Record

Finally in order to restore the original biblical record of the Assyrian conquest ofSamaria we have to look at those parts of the text that are shared by both of theparallel sections in 2Kgs 17 and 2Kgs 18 accordingly The text that is common toboth records is what the scribe of 2Kgs 189ndash12 found in 2Kgs 173ndash6 when hecopied it and added his comments to it and into which the glossator of 2Kgs173ndash6 inserted the additional details in vv 3bndash5a

In 173 par 189 רושא־ךלמרסאנמלשהלע is common to both versions ldquoShalma-neser the king of Assyria came uprdquo However it is hard to imagine that the per-fect הלע was the original beginning ndash though there is also one example of it in1519 ץראה־לערושא־ךלמלופאב ldquoPul (ie Tiglath-pileser) the king of Assyria cameagainst the landrdquo Preferably we have to look for some other reading

One possibility is that the section began with the narrative לעיו as is the casein 1Kgs 1517 שי־ךלמאשעבלעיו הדוהי־לעלאר ldquoBaasha king of Israel went up againstJudahrdquo and in 2Kgs 1514 ןורמשאביוהצרתמידג־ןבםחנמלעיו ldquoMenahem the son ofGadi came up from Tirzah and came to Samariardquo Also a temporal adverb canprecede the verb as in 2Kgs 1218 הדכליותג־לעםחליוםראךלמלאזחהלעיזא ldquoAtthat time Hazael king of Aram went up and fought against Gath and took itrdquoand in 2Kgs 2329 תרפ־רהנ־לערושאךלמ־לעםירצמ־ךלמהכנהערפהלעוימיב ldquoIn hisdays Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Eu-phratesrdquo Finally an exact date could have been given as in 1Kgs 1425 הנשביהיו

םלשורי־לעםירצמ־ךלמקשושהלעםעבחרךלמלתישימחה ldquoIn the fifth year of king Re-hoboam Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalemrdquo Following thelast example and taking in account the synchronism in 2Kgs 189 (which ofcourse has to be shortened as shown above) the original beginning could

262 Christoph Levin

have been like this ןורמש־לערושא־ךלמרסאנמלשהלעעשוהךלמלתיעיבשההנשביהיוldquoIn the seventh year of king Hoshea Shalmaneser king of Assyria came upagainst Samariardquo There are no means that help us decide among these alterna-tives However to my mind the last possibility is the most probable because itcould also have provided the basis for the synchronism in 189 which otherwisemust have been calculated from the ninth year of Hoshea in 176 and the threeyears of the siege in 175

In any case the pronoun וילע which opens 173 cannot be original for it refersto the data given for king Hoshea in vv 1ndash2 These data go back to anothersource the synchronistic excerpt of the annals of the kings of Israel andJudahsup3⁷ The present form of 173 is focused on the person of king Hoshea וילע

רסאנמלשהלע ldquoagainst him came up Shalmaneserrdquo Because this is in line withthe addition in vv 3bndash5a the change of the original reading may go back tothe same glossator The new point he made is balanced by v 5a רושא־ךלמלעיו

ץראה־לכב ldquoAnd the king of Assyria came up in all the landrdquo That means afterpunishing king Hoshea the Assyrian king turned towards the whole land takingup and continuing his campaign against Samaria This is again an addition ascan be seen from the double לעיו in v 5b Possibly the prefix ־לע that is still pre-served in 189 was lost in favor of לעיו which resumes the original הלע of v 3

Because 176 par 1810ndash 11 presents no major differences as a result of ourinquiry we have the supposed original record so far

תנשבםינששלשהילערציוןורמשgt־לעlthellipרושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעgtעשוהךלמלתיעיבשההנשביהיוltשי־תאלגיוןורמש־תארושא־ךלמדכלעשוהלgtעשתlt ידמירעוןזוגרהנרובחבוחלחבםתאבשיוהרושאלאר

In the seventh year of King Hoshea came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria against Samariaand besieged it for three years In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria capturedSamaria and he carried Israel away to Assyria and placed them in Halah and on theHabor the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes

Like the similar records about military attacks of foreign kings that are recordedin the Book of Kings this source is probably taken from an official documentused by the editor of the Book of Kings (ie the Deuteronomistic historian)when he composed his major work It can be continued with the note in 2Kgs1724 about the re-settlement of Samaria

See Christoph Levin ldquoThe Synchronistic Excerpt from the Annals of the Kings of Israel andJudahrdquo in id Re-Reading the Scriptures Essays on the Literary History of the Old Testament (Tuuml-bingen Mohr Siebeck 2013) 183ndash93


שיינבתחתןורמשירעבבשיו[םיורפסותמחמואועמוהתוכמולבבמרושא־ךלמאביו ןורמש־תאושריו]לארהירעבובשיו

And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon Cuthah Avva Hamath and Sephar-vaim [and made them dwell in the cities of Samaria instead of the Israelites]sup3⁸ and theytook possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities

The expression ldquoSamaria and its citiesrdquo witnesses that ldquoSamariardquo is not the nameof the city anymore but of the Assyrian province So the document tells aboutthe events in hindsight

I may underline that in the Bible no more than this short account was orig-inally recorded about the Assyrian conquest one single campaign under the As-syrian king Shalmaneser The siege lasted for three years from Hoshearsquos sevenththrough his ninth year (in line with the biblical way of counting years) Accord-ing to the dating Hoshearsquos rule ended when Samaria was conquered and to-gether with it the kingdom of Israel came to its end The conquest was followedby the deportation of the Israelites and by the resettlement of the newly installedAssyrian province

Nothing is said about the reason why the Assyrian king came up against Sa-maria This is what we also observe with the earlier Assyrian campaigns recordedin the Book of Kings For Tiglath-pileserrsquos campaign against king Menahem (2Kgs1519) and his campaign against king Pekah (2Kgs 1529) no reason is given eitherWhereas king Hezekiah of Judah is said to have rebelled against the Assyrianking (2Kgs 187) nothing similar is said of Hoshea The personal fate of theking remains unclear as well The end of the kingdom of Israel coincides withthe conquest of Samaria There is no period without a king And more importantand unfortunately enough there is nothing in the Bible that may help us decidebetween the two Assyrian kings Shalmaneser and Sargon who both claimed tohave conquered Samaria and about the question of whether the city was con-quered one or two times

Verse 24aβγ is a later addition This can be recognized from the doubling ןורמשירעבבשיו ldquohemade (them) dwell in the cities of Samariardquo along with הירעבובשיוןורמש־תאושריו ldquothey took pos-session of Samaria and dwelt in its citiesrdquo The addition emphasizes that the people from Bab-ylon replaced the Israelite inhabitants completely שיינבתחת לאר ldquoinstead of the Israelitesrdquo Thisassertion may be due to anti-Samaritan polemics

264 Christoph Levin

Part V Working with the Book of Kingsthe Chronological Framework

Kristin Weingart

2 Kings 15ndash18 a ChronologicalConundrum

1 Introduction

One of the outstanding features of the Book of Kings is that it not only contains aplethora of chronological data but also applies a distinctive chronological frame-work as a basic structuring device for its presentationsup1 So it is hardly surprisingthat compared with the preceding periods historians of Israel consider them-selves on firmer ground once they reach the monarchic period and that precisechronological tables are usually provided from here onwardssup2 At the same timethe obvious differences between the various chronological tablessup3 demonstratethat the interpretation of the chronological material in Kings remains an ongoing

The ordering principle has long been recognized cf eg Samuel Rolles Driver An Introduc-tion to the Literature of the Old Testament International Theological Library (Edinburgh Clark1891) 179 ldquoIn the arrangement of the reigns of the two series of kings a definite principle is fol-lowed by the compilerWhen the narrative of a reign (in either series) has once been begun it iscontinued to its close hellip when it is ended the reign or reigns of the other series which havesynchronized with it are dealt with the reign overlapping it at the end having been completedthe compiler resumes his narrative of the first series with the reign next following and so onrdquo See eg Herbert Donner Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in GrundzuumlgenTeil 2 Von der Koumlnigszeit bis zu Alexander dem Groszligen mit einem Ausblick auf die Geschichtedes Judentums bis Bar Kochba (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2001) 508 AccordinglyChristian Frevel Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2016) 31 distinguishes between aldquoVorgeschichte Israelsrdquoand a ldquoGeschichte Israelsrdquowhich commences with the monarchic period(10th or rather 9th century BCE) only then does Israel become visible as a state entity and biblicalas well as extra-biblical sources tend to provide more information The examples of Pekah and Hezekiah in three more recent chronological studies by AnttiLaato Guide to Biblical Chronology (Sheffield Phoenix 2015) 113 M Christine Tetley The Re-constructed Chronology of the Divided Kingdom (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2005) 182ndash83and Gershon Galil The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Leiden Brill 1996) Appen-dix A may suffice

Pekah ndash (Laato) ndash (Tetley) ()ndash (Galil)Hezekiah ndash (Laato) ndash (Tetley) ndash (Galil)

Note that Tetley only lists Hezekiahrsquos dates up to the fall of Samaria which according to herreconstruction took place in 719718 BCE

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-013

task in biblical scholarship⁴ The reasons are manifold they lie in the inconsis-tencies of the biblical data their lack of compatibility with external data butfirst and foremost in the fact that reconstructing a chronology remains an equa-tion with several unknowns⁵ Ever since a ground breaking study by Julius Well-hausen⁶ in 1875 the respective weighting and handling of the numerous factorsof uncertainty have resulted in differing reconstructions⁷

The question itself is much older than the onset of historical-critical exegesis attempts to elu-cidate the biblical chronology have accompanied the history of exegesis from its beginningsEarly examples include Josephusrsquos systematizing treatment of the chronology of Kings in his An-tiquitates Judaicae IXf the rabbinic Seder Olam Rabah (SOR critical edition Chaim Joseph Mil-ikowsky Seder Olam A Rabbinic Chronography [Diss Yale University 1981]) which already triesto minimize the surplus in Judean regnal years in comparison to those of the Israelite kings (seeSOR 17 19) or Eusebiusrsquo Chronicon which includes diverging data of the ancient versions into itscalculations Joachim Begrich Die Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda und die Quellen des Rahmensder Koumlnigsbuumlcher (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 1929) 55ndash101 systematically outlined the principalproblems (1) inconsistencies within the chronological data eg conflicting synchronisms orsums of regnal years for Israel and Judah (2) variant numerical data in the ancient versions(3) uncertainties regarding the calendar in ancient Israel eg the date of the New Year (4) un-certainties regarding the counting methods for regnal years ie postdating or antedating and(5) frequent incompatibility with external data ie Assyrian or Babylonian sources which en-able one to date specific events with a greater degree of certainty A sixth point not explicitlylisted by Begrich concerns the occurrence of coregencies and their handling in chronologicalcompilations Julius Wellhausen ldquoDie Zeitrechnung des Buches der Koumlnige seit der Theilung des ReichesrdquoJDT 20 (1875) 607ndash40 While biblical scholars in the late 19th or early 20th centuries like Wellhausen tended to freelyemend the biblical numbers or to combine data from the Masoretic Text (MT) the Greek textualtradition and early historiographers like Josephus in order to reach a consistent reconstruction(so eg Begrich Chronologie) later studies put more trust in the Masoretic Text Prominent ex-amples are Edwin R Thiele The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings a Reconstruction of theChronology of the Kingdoms of Israel und Judah (Exeter Paternoster 1965) who assumes multiplechanges in the method of reckoning as well as frequent co-regencies in order to reconstruct acoherent system On the other hand John Haralson Hayes and Paul K Hooker A New Chronologyfor the Kings of Israel and Judah and Its Implications for Biblical History and Literature (AtlantaGA Knox 1988) work with different calendars in Israel and Judah to compensate for inconsis-tencies At the same time it became increasingly clear that at least parts of the Greek textual tra-dition present separate chronological systems whose relation to the chronology of the MT has tobe determined Eg James Donald Shenkel Chronology and Recensional Development in theGreek Text of Kings (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1968) and Tetley Chronologysee the MT chronology as a secondary adaptation of an older chronological system attestedin the OG (for a critical appraisal of this position see eg Galil Chronology 127ndash44)

268 Kristin Weingart

What applies to the reconstruction of the chronology of Kings as a wholeis also true for 2Kgs 15ndash 18 Despite the large amount of chronological materialprovided in these chapters the reconstruction of a chronological framework re-mains difficult Here again the biblical data is characterized by a lack of innerconsistency and outward compatibility⁸ The present paper however does notintend to add a further entry to the extensive list of proposals and counter pro-posals on the historic timeline for Israel and Judah It differs from the over-whelming majority of past and present studies on the chronology of Kings

Besides the notorious issues of the sequence of events and the date of the fall of Samariawhich are discussed elsewhere in this volume another problem is the excess of years in the bib-lical chronology compared to external data Menahem is listed in two Assyrian sources as offer-ing tribute to Tiglath-pileser III firstly in a royal stele from Iran (Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptionsof Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Edition with Introductions Translations and Com-mentary [Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1994] 106ndash 107 IIIA 5 =Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC)and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011)no 35 iii 5) and secondly the Calah Annals (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III68ndash69 Ann 13 10 = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser IIIno 14 10 Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 89 Ann 27 2 = Tadmor and YamadaThe Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 32 2) The tribute mentioned in the Calah Annalswas connected by Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 276 with Tiglath-pileserrsquos 8th

palucirc ie 738 BC The list of the Iran stele seems to refer to an earlier tribute probably paidin 740 Tiglath-pileser III also claims to have disposed of Pekah and installed Hoshea as kingin Israel (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 4 15primendash19prime = Tadmor and YamadaThe Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 42 15primendash 19prime cf Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 13 17primendash18prime = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser IIIno 44 17primendash18prime) Hoshea is reported to have brought tribute to Tiglath-pileser III (Tadmor TheInscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 9 rev 9ndash 11 = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscrip-tions of Tiglath-pileser III no 49 rev 9ndash11) The latter probably refers to Tiglath-pileserrsquos 15th

palucirc in 731 BC Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 277ndash78 cf Galil Chronology 65Therefore the regnal years listed for the Israelite kings after Menahem (Pekahiah 2 yearsPekah 20 years) clearly exceed the 7-year period indicated by the Assyrian material The issueis usually resolved by (a) attributing a shorter reign to Pekah 2 years Begrich Chronologie155 4 years Jeremy Hughes Secrets of the Times Myth and History in Biblical Chronology (Shef-field JSOT Press 1990) 204ndash205 Laato Guide 43ndash48 5 years Galil Chronology 65 (b) byidentifying Pekahiah and Pekah Wellhausen ldquoZeitrechnungrdquo 630ndash31 Julian Reade ldquoMesopo-tamian Guidelines for Biblical Chronologyrdquo SMS 4 (1981) 5 or (c) by assuming a simultaneous(counter‐)kingdom of Pekah beginning in the reign of Jerobeam II Zechariah or Menahem JuliusLewy Die Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda (Gieszligen Alfred Toumlpelmann 1927) 18ndash 19ThieleMysterious Numbers 114 H J Cook ldquoPekahrdquoVT 14 (1974) 121ndash35 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoHis-torical and Chronological Notes on the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the Eight Century BCrdquoVT 36 (1986) 74ndash82 Tetley Chronology 148ndash51 bases her reconstruction here on a variant in G-manuscript 127 and attributes 12 regnal years to Pekahiah

2 Kings 15ndash 18 a Chronological Conundrum 269

whose aim was programmatically stated by Alfred Jepsen to ldquodevelop a systemwhich respects the tradition and fits in well with the established Assyrian andBabylonian synchronismsrdquo⁹ The combination of both aspects has led to metic-ulous work on the extant sources and brought forth detailed reconstructions butnone of them proved able to prevail among the scholarly community With re-gards to methodology this approach has exerted a high pressure to correct orchange the biblical data in order to reach an acceptable fit The inner systemof the biblical chronology its underlying historical ideas as well as the relationof the chronological data to the narrative material in Kings tended to be over-looked in the processsup1⁰ For this reason the present study focuses on the chro-nological data within 2Kgs 15ndash 18 on their own right and intends to elucidatethe chronological concept conveyed and the ways and means of its compilationThis will be done initially irrespective of the extra-biblical data for the historicalperiod in question Whether the biblical chronology and the extra biblical datacan be reconciled or whether the expectation that they could is even justifiedis a different matter ndash and outside the scope of this paper A thorough under-standing of the biblical chronology and its development however is a necessaryprerequisite for its use in any historical reconstruction It may help to differenti-ate between reliable data and numbers obtained by the redactor(s) through somecalculation method (which is the main focus of the present paper) and can pro-vide insights into the nature of the sources behind the synchronistic compilationas well as its underlying pragmaticssup1sup1

2 Chronological Consistency and Inconsistencyin 2Kgs 15ndash18

2Kgs 15ndash18 describe the last era of the Northern kingdom of Israel and the con-temporaneous history of Judah After the long reign of Jeroboam II there are six

Alfred Jepsen ldquoZur Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda Eine Uumlberpruumlfungrdquo in Unter-suchungen zur israelitisch-juumldischen Chronologie ed Alfred Jepsen and Robert Hanhart (BerlinToepelmann 1964) 6 A notable exception is Laato Guide who divides his study into three steps (1) an explana-tion of the biblical traditions (2) a presentation of the extrabiblical material and (3) a demonstra-tion of ldquohow the biblical and ancient Jewish chronological traditions can be harmonized withextra-biblical materialrdquo (Laato Guide 2ndash3) For a discussion of these broader questions see Kristin Weingart Gezaumlhlte Geschichte Diesynchronistischen Datierungen in den Koumlnigebuumlchern in literargeschichtlicher und historischer Per-spektive (forthcoming)


more Israelite kings four of whom rule in parallel to the exceedingly long term ofAzariah (Zechariah Shallum Menahem and Pekahiah) They are followed byPekah and Hoshea At the same time four Judean kings are listed followingAzariah these are Jotham Ahaz and Hezekiah The table in Fig 1 shows thechronological data provided in 2Kgs 15ndash18

Some of these data show a high degree of consistency This is the case in theregnal year totals and synchronistic accession dates for the kings of Israel fromZechariah to Pekah (2Kgs 151 8 13 23 27)With the sole exception of Menahemthe reign lengths given fit the intervals indicated by the synchronisms At thesame time it is evident that an accession year system (postdating) is appliedin order to establish the total number of regnal years of each king

The case of Pekahiah can serve as an example His reign parallels the 50th51st and 52nd year of Azariah Therefore he ascended to the throne some time inthe 50th year of Azariah which is treated as his accession year and not yet count-ed as a regnal year The 51st and 52nd year of Azariah are attributed to him as reg-nal years the sum of which adds up to two As usual in cases of postdating asubtraction of the synchronisms equals the regnal years given

For a case of the alternative counting method ie antedating see Nadab in1Kgs 1525 33 His reign starts in the 2nd year of Asa while his successor Baashaascended to the throne in the 3rd year of Asa However he is also attributed atwo-year-long reign This implies that the year of his accession though shared

Fig 1 Table illustrating the chronological data provided in 2Kgs 15ndash18 Prepared by the author


with Jeroboam I is counted as a full regnal year as well In the case of antedatingthe subtraction of the synchronisms is always one year short in comparison withthe number of regnal years listed

The synchronistic date for Hezekiahrsquos accession and the subsequent paralle-lization of dates for the conquest of Samaria between Hezekiah and Hoshea(2Kgs 176 181 9 f) are consistent as well As in the case of the Israelite kingspostdating is also applied for the determination of Hezekiahrsquos reign lengthsup1sup2

Despite these cases of chronological coherence the overall compilation dis-plays an apparent lack of consistency conflicts and conspicuities are discerniblein no less than seven instances

(1) The sum of regnal years attributed to the Israelite kings after Jeroboam IIis 41 years and 7 months The reign lengths of the Judean kings in the same pe-riod add up to 53 yearssup1sup3

(2) Menahem is listed with 10 regnal years (2Kgs 1517) but the synchronisticdates of his accession (39th year of Azariah) and that of his successor Pekahiah(2Kgs 1523 50th year of Azariah) imply an 11-year reign

(3) For the accession of Hoshea two synchronistic dates are extant neitherof which easily agrees with the data for the Judean kings‒ 2Kgs 1530 synchronizes the beginning of his reign with the 20th year of Jo-

tham However according to 2Kgs 1532 Jotham only reigned for 16 yearsso there should not be a 20th year of Jotham

‒ 2Kgs 171 dates his accession to the 12th year of Ahaz However if Ahazreigned for 16 years and his successor Hezekiah came to the throne in the3rd year of Hoshea then Hoshearsquos accession should fall into the 13th yearof Ahazrsquo reign(4) Jothamrsquos regnal year total and accession date (2Kgs 1532) in combination

with the synchronistic date for his successor Ahaz (2Kgs 161) seem to indicateantedating since the synchronistic dates imply a 15-year reign for Jotham anda regnal year total of 16 years is attributed to him This differs from Hezekiah

Hezekiahrsquos 4th year can only parallel Hoshearsquos 7th year if the initial period of Hezekiahrsquosreign which falls into Hoshearsquos 3rd year is treated as an accession year His 1st regnal year cor-responds to Hoshearsquos 4th year and accordingly Hezekiahrsquos 4th year coincides with Hoshearsquos 7th

year For the Israelite kings the numbers are Zechariah 6 months Shallum 1 month Menahem10 years Pekahiah 2 years Pekah 20 years and Hoshea 9 years For the Judean kings thesame period is marked by the synchronistic dates for Zechariahrsquos accession (38th year of Azariah)and Hoshearsquos 9th year (= 7th year of Hezekiah) Therefore the sum includes 14 years for Azariah 16years each for Jotham and Ahaz and 7 years for Hezekiah Assuming antedating for the reigns ofthe Judean kings and postdating for the Israelite ones would only reduce the difference in thetotals


whose data clearly indicate that postdating was used to determine the number ofhis regnal yearssup1⁴

(5) The synchronistic date for Jothamrsquos accession ie the 2nd year of Pekah(2Kgs 1532) is conspicuous According to 2Kgs 1527 Pekahrsquos reign began inthe 52nd year of Azariah which is also the latterrsquos last year If Jotham had suc-ceeded Azariah directly his rule should have commenced in the 2nd year of Pe-kahiah (which would coincide with the accession year of Pekah) This howeverwould render the subsequent synchronistic dates impossible esp the one forAhaz (2Kgs 161 17th year of Pekah) The present data seem to indicate an inter-regnum of 1ndash2 years between the end of Azariahrsquos reign and the beginning ofJothamrsquossup1⁵

(6) The synchronistic dates for the accession of Ahaz (2Kgs 161) and Heze-kiah (2Kgs 181) are incompatible with the number of regnal years attributed toAhaz Between the 17th year of Pekah and the 3rd year of Hoshea there is onlyroom for 6 years not 16

(7) The issue of Ahazrsquos age has been a long noted crux If Ahaz ascended tothe throne at the age of 20 and ruled for 16 years (2Kgs 161) he would have been36 when Hezekiah took over Hezekiah however is said to have been 25 yearsold at the beginning of his reign (2Kgs 181) So Ahaz can only have been an11-year old boy when Hezekiah was bornWhile this might be possible from a bi-ological point of view it is improbable and would remain a notable exceptionamong the Judean kings who are usually around 20 years old when the heir tothe throne is bornsup1⁶

The remarkable density of chronological problems within 2Kgs 15ndash 18 hasyielded an even greater abundance of attempts to explain themsup1⁷ These are in-evitably connected with more comprehensive propositions regarding the compi-lation history of the chronological data in the Book of Kings and the system be-hind it as well as the literary history and pragmatics of the regnal frame as its

See above note 12 Cf Thiele Mysterious Numbers 110ndash 11 See the lists provided by Begrich Chronologie 164 although some of his corrections are un-necessary Azariah is another notable exception according to the data provided in 2Kgs 152 33he was at the age of 43 when Jotham was born Only a small selection of proposals can be mentioned or even reviewed in the presentcontext the more so as most of them necessarily go hand in hand with more general presuppo-sitions on the development and organization principles of the synchronistic chronology inKings For collections of recent proposals see Robb Andrew Young Hezekiah in History and Tra-dition (Leiden Brill 2012) 9ndash34 or Raik Heckl ldquoHiskiardquo wibilex 2012 (httpswwwbibelwissenschaftdestichwort21346 accessed 102017)


text basesup1⁸ on the one hand and the overall aim to achieve a compatibility of thebiblical data with the external sources on the other

Though not dealing with the latter issue the propositions outlined in thispaper depend on a more general understanding of the synchronistic chronologyas a whole (see below) They will address two questions which individual com-ponents of the overall conundrum within 2Kgs 15ndash18 are interconnected andhow the current contradictory picture might have come about

In contrast to the data for other periods the textual witnesses for 2Kgs 15ndash 18offer only a very limited number of variants Most of them originate from differ-ing chronological concepts or from attempts to harmonize or minimize inconsis-tencies within the given materialsup1⁹

An example of the former is the Greek manuscript 127sup2⁰ belonging to a fam-ily of manuscripts which attest the Antiochene text which has a unique andsystematic reworking of the whole synchronistic chronology in Kingssup2sup1 For thelatter two examples may suffice (1) According to the 12th cent minuscule 245Menahem reigned for 20 years The synchronistic dates are adjusted accordinglyShallumrsquos reign and the beginning of Menahemrsquos reign fall into the 30th year ofAzariah in order to accommodate the date of Pekahiahrsquos accession (50th year of

For the latter see the recent study by Benjamin D Thomas Hezekiah and the CompositionalHistory of the Book of Kings (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2014) which also provides an overview ofthe older discussion Text critical examinations of the chronological data inevitably face a methodological prob-lem in order to determine whether a given variant resembles a correction deviation or other-wise motivated change the underlying chronological system must be understood On theother hand proposals on the design of the underlying system depend on the data that the as-sumed system is supposed to include Thus the danger of arguing within a hermeneutic circle isever present The nomenclature follows Alfred Rahlfs Verzeichnis der griechischen Handschriften des AltenTestaments (Berlin Weidmann 1914) See Shenkel Chronology 27ndash31 Tetley Chronology nevertheless bases parts of her chrono-logical reconstruction on 127 because she believes it still contains a number of old ie prae-MTregnal year totals and synchronisms (63) 127 has the following variant regnal year totals in 2Kgs15ndash 18 Menahem 20 years Pekahiah 12 years and Pekah 30 years The synchronistic dates are

Zechariah th year of Azariah Jotham

nd year of PekahShallum

th year of Azariah Ahaz th year of Pekah

Menahem th year of Azariah Hezekiah

th year of HosheaPekahiah

th year of AzariahPekah

th year of AzariahHoshea

th year of Ahaz


Azariah)sup2sup2 The beginning of Hezekiahrsquos reign is dated to the 5th year of Hosheathus avoiding a contradiction with Hoshearsquos accession date (12th year of Ahaz)and the length of Ahazrsquo reign (16 years) (2) Codex Alexandrinus the Antiochenemanuscripts 19 82 93 and 108 as well as the minuscules 158 and 700 indicate aregnal year total of 10 years for Pekahiah This reading is arguably a correctionresulting from another attempt to harmonize the accession year of Pekahiah (50th

year of Azariah) the regnal year total of Ahaz (16 years) and the accession dateof Hoshea (12th year of Ahaz)sup2sup3

3 The Chronological Concept of theSynchronistic Framework in 2Kgs 15ndash 18

The following observations are based on the proposition (to be defended below)that the synchronistic chronology in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 was compiled on the basis oftwo sets of numbers (1) a compilation of regnal year totals and synchronistic ac-cession dates for the kings of Israel and (2) a collection of regnal year totals forthe kings of Judah The synchronistic dates for the accession of the Judean kingswere calculated by combining Judean regnal year totals and Israelite accessiondates In this respect 2Kgs 15ndash 18 is consistent with other parts of the synchron-istic chronology in Kings The chronological compilation is best explained as aseries of consecutive combinations interlacing the two sets of numbers eachcombination being internally coherent but limited in rangesup2⁴

As noted in the beginning the chronological data for the Israelite kings iethe combination of regnal year totals and accession dates are perfectly consistentndash with the sole exception of Menahem (Fig 2)

Menahemrsquos case is peculiar because the synchronistic dates indicate a reignof 11 years but 2Kgs 1517 attributes only 10 regnal years to him This combina-tion is not compatible with antedating because Menahemrsquos regnal years would

Minuscule 245 shows an analogous tendency to avoid contradictions in other parts of thesynchronistic chronology as well such as the chronological data on Omri (1Kgs 1623) Joram(2Kgs 118a) or Azariah (2Kgs 151) The other attested variants are (1) Regnal year totals 2Kgs 1513 Shallum 8 days (A) 2Kgs1523 Pekahiah 10 years (A 19 82 93 108 158 700) 12 years (V 52 107 489 et al) 2Kgs1527 Pekah 28 years (55 56 119 372 554) 2Kgs 181 Hezekiah 25 years (130) (2) Synchronisticdates 2Kgs 158 Zechariah 28th year of Azariah (V 92 106 120 130 134 314 489 554) 2Kgs 1527Pekah 62nd year of Azariah (489) 2Kgs 1532 Jotham 13th year of Pekah (71) 2Kgs 171 Hoshea 10th

year of Ahaz (82) For the variants in manuscripts 127 and 245 see above For a detailed discussion and justification see Weingart Gezaumlhlte Geschichte


then amount to 12 Assuming postdating was used a total of 11 regnal yearswould be expected so the figure is still off by one year The textual witnessesunanimously support the MT in this case so to assume a mistake would besheer conjecture The synchronistic dates on the other hand are completelyin line with the neighboring synchronisms for Zechariah and Shallum as wellas Pekah changing them would cause a series of new problems and is equallyunfounded

This curious number of regnal years for Menahem coincides however withthe fact that the combination of reign lengths and accession dates for earlier Is-raelite kings point to antedating when counting their regnal yearssup2⁵ while thedata for the later kings (like Pekahiah) indicate postdating It has been suggestedby Gershon Galil that Menahemrsquos data reflect a change from ante- to postdatingprompted by the adoption of the Assyrian custom of differentiating between theaccession year of a king and the first regnal year starting with the first New Year

Fig 2 Diagram showing the chronological data for the kings of Israel provided in 2Kgs 15ndash18Prepared by the author

Ahaziah is the last Israelite king before Menahem with a complete and well attested set ofdates Here the interplay of synchronistic accession date and regnal year total for Ahaziah (1Kgs2252) and synchronistic accession date for Joram (2Kgs 31) imply antedating There is no regularintroductory formula and accession date for Jehu therefore the method of reckoning for Joramand Jehu remains unclear The number of regnal years for Joash also presupposes antedating ifone reads with greater parts of the G-tradition the synchronism ldquo39th year of Jehoashrdquo in 2Kgs1310 The MT has in 2Kgs 1310 the synchronism ldquo37th year of Jehoashrdquo which conflicts withthe neighboring synchronistic dates in 2Kgs 131 and 141 The MT-reading seems to result froman attempt to reconcile the date with the accession date of Jehoash (2Kgs 122 ldquo7th year ofJehurdquo) There is no trace of a corresponding change in 2Kgs 131 which should read ldquo21st yearof Jehoashrdquo if the MT were correct


in the kingrsquos reignsup2⁶ The narrative material on Menahem corroborates the sug-gestion 2Kgs 159 f not only mentions the exceedingly high tribute of 1000 tal-ents of silver which Menahem paid but also reports the introduction of a taxationsystem in order to collect the necessary means Following the Assyrian systemwith regard to the reckoning of regnal years could well have coincided with an-other change discernible in various texts whose exact date is hard to determine ndashthe change of the New Year in Israel from autumn to spring

Since the issue has been extensively discussedsup2⁷ a short outline of its mainfeatures may suffice The Gezer calendar as well as the traditions reflected in thevarious festival calendars in the Pentateuch (Ex 2314ndash 19 3418ndash26 Lev 231ndash14Deut 161ndash7) although the texts themselves are mostly younger indicate that inearlier pre-exilic times the year began in the autumnsup2⁸ Whenever the monthsare numbered however the first month seems to lie in the spring (see egEx 122 Jer 362) Together with the use of Babylonian month names this attestsan adaptation of Assyrian andor Babylonian calendars While it is clear (cfmRHSh 11) that in later postexilic times the New Year was transferred back tothe autumn the question remains when the interlude of a vernal New Yearstarted With regards to Judah the change is often associated with Josiahsup2⁹ orthe Babylonian exilesup3⁰ For Israel the data is even sparser Therefore some

Galil Chronology 62 For Galil however the change took place already during the reign ofJoash Galil is correct in pointing out that Menahem is not the first Israelite king mentionedin Assyrian sources as paying tribute At least Jehu (cf Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian Rulersof the Early First Millennium BC II (858ndash754 BC) [Toronto Toronto University Press 1996]A010288) and Joash (cf Grayson Assyrian Rulers A01047 8) were also Assyrian vassals Un-like the case of Menahem the OT does not indicate any influence on Israelite administrative mat-ters and the chronological data do not indicate an earlier change from ante- to postdating For an overview and further references see eg Karl Jaroš ldquoKalenderrdquo in Neues Bibellexikonvol 2 ed Manfred Goumlrg (1995) 429ndash32 James CVanderKam ldquoCalendars Ancient Israelite andEarly Jewishrdquo in The Anchor Bible Dictionary vol 1 ed David Noel Freedman (1992) 813ndash20 aswell as the discussions in Begrich Chronologie 66ndash90 Thiele Mysterious Numbers 29ndash33 JackFinegan Handbook of Biblical Chronology Principles of Time Reckoning in the Ancient World andProblems of Chronology in the Bible (Peabody MA Hendrickson 1998) 29ndash35 76ndash80 LaatoGuide 14ndash16 According to Lev 258ndash9 sabbatical years and jubilees also begin in the autumn althoughthe text mentions the ldquoseventh monthrdquo implying that the first month is in the spring ThieleMysterious Numbers 30ndash2 and Laato Guide 14ndash 15 also point to 1Kgs 637ndash8 and 2Kgs 23for additional support of an autumnal turn of the year for the latter see already Begrich Chro-nologie 68ndash69 Begrich Chronologie 70ndash90 cf Hayes and Hooker New Chronology 13 So eg Laato Guide 15 asserting a change coinciding with Jeconiahrsquos exile and a transitionperiod of parallel chronological systems up to Zedekiah Thiele Mysterious Numbers 33 as-


scholars deny a shift in the chronological system altogether and assert either anautumnal yearsup3sup1 or vernal year for Northern Israelrsquos monarchic period as a wholeIf a change of systems and New Year date is accepted however it is usually con-nected to Assyrian influence and dated into the 8th century BCEsup3sup2 In this casethe chronological data for Menahem would offer a valuable clue

A shift of the New Year from fall to spring in Israel while the autumn datestill remained unchanged in Judah could well explain why Menahem was onlyattributed 10 regnal years although the synchronistic dates indicate an 11-yearperiod in Judah

If these assumptions are correct they allow some conclusions regarding thenature of the material in which the chronological data for the Israelite kings wastransmitted and which was used by the compiler of the synchronistic frameworkA change of reckoning method and New Year date at a certain point with conse-quences for the interplay of regnal year totals and synchronisms does not pointto a systematic (and potentially artificial) construction but rather to continuallykept records which reflect and incorporate such changes when they occur Thiswould add weight to the view that older official records like king lists andorchronicles constitute the basis of (or at least parts of) the chronological datain the Book of Kingssup3sup3 In contrast to the common view that these documentsonly contained regnal year totals the correspondence between these totalsand the synchronistic dates strongly suggests that such an older document deal-ing with the kings of Israel already included synchronistic accession datessup3⁴

At least at the time the Israelite data was combined with the Judean materialthe synchronistic accession dates of the Israelite kings must have been presentfor the combination with the Judean data obviously presupposes them The reg-nal year totals for the Judean kings of this period amount to 52 years for Azariah

sumes a consistent adherence to an autumnal year in Judah for the whole monarchic periodGalil Chronology 9ndash10 on the other hand reckons with a vernal year for the same period So eg Galil Chronology 9 Cf Hayes and Hooker New Chronology 13 who additionallyargue for differing autumnal New Year dates in Israel and Judah Jaroš ldquoKalenderrdquo 431 While many researchers would probably ascribe to this general proposition ndash see eg theinfluential study by Shoshana Bin-Nun ldquoFormulas from Royal Records of Israel and ofJudahrdquo VT 18 (1968) 414ndash32 or Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Temple Library of Jerusalem and theComposition of the Book of Kingsrdquo in Congress Volume Leiden 2004 ed Andreacute Lemaire (LeidenBrill 2006) 129ndash52 ndash the form and content of these sources as well as the questions how and atwhat stage they reached the author(s) of the Book of Kings remain highly controversial cf therecent overview in Thomas Hezekiah 84ndash 102 Bin-Nun ldquoFormulasrdquo 426 allowed for the possibility that the synchronistic dates for the ac-cession of Ahab Ahaziah Joram and Jehoshaphat were already present in the older king lists


(2Kgs 151) 16 years for Jotham (1532) 16 years for Ahaz (2Kgs 161) and 29 yearsfor Hezekiah (2Kgs 181) According to 2Kgs 189 f the first 6 regnal years of He-zekiah parallel the last 6 years of Hoshea Using the synchronism of Hezekiahrsquosaccession and the subsequent chronological alignment of the fall of Samaria asan anchor the combination shown in Fig 3 emerges

It becomes immediately apparent that Ahazrsquos reign length is not compatiblewith the synchronistic dates for his and Hezekiahrsquos accession In addition thetotal of 16 years for Ahaz also pushes the beginning of Jothamrsquos reign wellback into the time of Menahem and thus conflicts with the formerrsquos synchroni-zation with Pekah (2Kgs 1532) The synchronistic dates rather imply a reignlength of only 6 years for Ahazsup3⁵ Assuming that an older number of 6 yearswas accidentally changed to 16 ndash possibly influenced by the regnal year totalof Jotham (16 years) just a few verses earlier (1533) ndash most of the neighboringsynchronisms ndash Israelite as well as Judean ndash fall nicely into place (Fig 4)

Fig 3 Diagram showing the combined chronological data for Israel and Judah provided in 2Kgs15ndash18 Prepared by the author

There is no textual witness for this date but as Claus Schedl ldquoTextkritische Bemerkungen zuden Synchronismen der Koumlnige von Israel und JudardquoVT 12 (1962) 88ndash 119 already pointed outa change of 10 years is a rather frequent phenomenon within the chronological material Such achange appears in Kings besides Chronicles (cf 1Kgs 16682Chr 161 2Kgs 2482Chr 369) oramong the textual witnesses (cf 1Kgs 152 Codex B ldquo6 years he reigned in Jerusalemrdquo CodexA and minuscules 52 92 247 121 ldquo16 years he reigned in Jerusalemrdquo 1Kgs 1525 MT ldquo2nd year ofAsardquo Greek minuscule 501 ldquo12th year of Asardquo 2Kgs 158 MT ldquo38th year of Azariahrdquo Codex Vand minuscules 92 106 120 127 130 134 314 489 554 ldquo28th year of Azariahrdquo 2Kgs 1527 MT ldquo52nd

year of Azariahrdquo minuscule 489 ldquo62nd year of Azariahrdquo)


Only the synchronistic date for the accession of Hoshea (2Kgs 171) the 12th

year of Ahaz does not agree with this combination One would expect the 2nd

or 3rd year of Ahaz depending on the exact date of his accession in the courseof the year and its relation to the Judean New Year

The synchronistic date for Jothamrsquos accession the 2nd year of Pekah impliesthat an accession year is not taken into account in his case Moreover the currentcombination results in a gap between the 52nd year of Azariah and the beginningof Jothamrsquos rule As it seems the regnal year totals with which the compiler hadto work did not add up to the number of years required to cover the stretch oftime indicated by the Israelite data

The lack of an accession year points to a possible justification for this unusu-al combination in the eyes of the compilersup3⁶ in the chronological data for theJudean kings there are only two instances of documented co-regencies or over-lapping reigns ndash Jehoshaphat and Jehoram (2Kgs 816) and Amaziah and Azariah(2Kgs 1422) In the former case a short note in the regnal frame indicates thatJehoshaphat was still king when Jehoram began to reign ( ןבםרוילשמחתנשבו

הדוהיךלמטפשוהיןבםרוהיךלמהדוהיךלמטפשוהיולארשיךלמבאחא )sup3⁷ In the latter

Fig 4 Diagram showing the combined chronological data with a corrected regnal year total forAhaz Prepared by the author

An alternative explanation would be an isolated instance of antedating Considering the con-sistent use of postdating in the chronological data for the Judean kings such a change would behard to explain Many commentators see הדוהיךלמתפשוהיו as a gloss secondarily inserted into the text anddisturbing the usual sequence of the introductory formula (see eg Otto Thenius Die Buumlcherder Koumlnige KEH [Leipzig Hirzel 1873] 312 Wellhausen ldquoZeitrechnungrdquo 616 Shenkel Chronol-ogy 73 Georg Hentschel 2 Koumlnige NEB [Wuumlrzburg Echter Verlag 1985] 37 Volkmar Fritz Das


the narrative in 2Kgs 1419ndash22 reports the circumstances of Amaziahrsquos dismissaland Azariahrsquos accession while 1422 seems to imply that there was a period inAzariahrsquos reign which lay in the lifetime of his predecessor Amaziah In bothcases the interplay of synchronistic dates and regnal year totals shows thatno accession year is included the beginning of the kingrsquos reign rather coincideswith the first year counted as a regnal yearsup3⁸

In the case at hand the narrative description of the end of Azariahrsquos reignprovided the compiler with a suitable explanation for the chronological gap in-dicated in his final years Azariah suffered from a disease which impeded himfrom ruling so Jotham functioned as an interim ruler (2Kgs 155 לעךלמהןבםתויו

ץראהםעתאטפשתיבה ) The result was a chronological concept which showedsome peculiarities but remained within the reasonable and justifiable boundsprovided by the narrative material on the kings of Judah

In sum the synchronistic chronology in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 can be explained as acombination of data on the Israelite kings (regnal year totals and synchronisticaccession dates) with regnal year totals for the Judean kings It displays an ap-plication of certain compilation techniques (no accession year in case of co-re-genciessup3⁹) and methods of reckoning regnal years (postdating for Judah and a

zweite Buch der Koumlnige ZBKAT [Zuumlrich TVZ 1998] 43) The words are also missing in some tex-tual witnesses (GNmin Syh SVMss) prompting the apparatus of the BHS to suggest their deletion816 obviously deviates from the usual regnal frame but this marks the phrase rather as a lectiodifficilior probabilior a secondary adjustment to the regular formula is much more plausiblethan a later addition (Juumlrgen Werlitz Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige [Stuttgart Katholisches Bibelwerk2002] 234 cf Burke O Long 2 Kings [Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1991] 108) Besides it is hardto explain what information the assumed gloss הדוהיךלמתפשוהיו should have conveyed ThatJehoshaphat was king of Judah is implied by the filiation in v 16b However if the phrase indi-cates a coregency it has a recognizable function within the introductory formula and one doesnot have to assume a gloss or an interpolation Jehoramrsquos accession is dated to the 5th year of Joram (2Kgs 816) the reign of his successorAhaziah begins in the 12th year of Joram (2Kgs 825) Since Jehoram is said to have reigned for8 years (817) no accession year is attributed to him The case of Azariah is more complicatedThe original date of his accession is probably the 17th year of Jeroboam (the number 27 seems tobe another instance of a change of 10 see above note 35) The compiler probably understood theevents related in 2Kgs 1419ndash22 as a period in which the kingship was in dispute and assumed atemporary co-regency between Amaziah and Azariah (cf Thiele Mysterious Numbers GalilChronology 57ndash59) Accordingly Azariahrsquos term does not begin in the 16th year of Jeroboam ndashas would be expected if there had been an accession year ndash but it is dated to the 17th year ofJeroboam Co-regencies or overlapping reigns are always indicated within the regnal frame itself or inthe narrative material included for the respective kings (see below) In order to understand thechronological concept of the synchronistic framework of Kings on its own right there is no needto postulate a greater number of co-regencies than indicated even though the assumption often


reasonable change from antedating to postdating with Menahem for Israel⁴⁰)that is consistent with the compilation of data for other periods of the synchron-istic chronology The compilation itself further suggests a familiarity with narra-tive material fixed in between the introductory and closing formulae of the reg-nal frames⁴sup1

4 A Glimpse Behind the SynchronisticFramework

So far it has been shown that the chronological data in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 are no arbi-trary collection of figures but bear witness to a thoughtfully designed synchron-istic chronology which builds upon different materials and reflects a certain ideaof the chronological sequence of the last five decades in the period of the dividedkingdoms Some of the discrepancies noted above have proven to be mere appa-rent ones once the compilation techniques were better understood Other phe-nomena within the chronological data have not been addressed yet They coin-cide with notable peculiarities in the narrative material within 2Kgs 15 f as well

functions as an effective means to reconcile the biblical chronology with external data ThieleMysterious Numbers 61ndash65 eg presupposes seven cases of co-regency in his chronological re-construction six in Judah and one in Israel (see also Edwin R Thiele ldquoCoregencies and Over-lapping Reigns among the Hebrew Kingsrdquo JBL 93 [1974] 174ndash200) Leslie McFall ldquoSome MissingCoregencies in Thielersquos Chronologyrdquo AUSS 30 (1992) 35ndash58 wants to add another four For amethodological critique see Laato Guide 19ndash22 There is no need to assume frequent and basically unmotivated changes in the praxis of reg-nal year reckoning in Israel and Judah as Thiele Mysterious Numbers proposes According toThiele Judah changed from postdating (Rehoboam ndash Jehoshaphat) to antedating (Jehoram ndash Je-hoash) and back to postdating (Amaziah ndash Zedekiah) Israel changed from antedating to post-dating at the time of Joash (see the table p 281ndash82) This of course does not imply that all the material contained in the Book of Kings was al-ready present quite the contrary many of the prophetic stories are in all likelihood later addi-tions cf eg Hermann-Josef Stipp Elischa ndash Propheten ndash Gottesmaumlnner Die Kompositionsge-schichte des Elischazyklus und verwandter Texte rekonstruiert auf der Basis von Text- undLiterarkritik zu 1 Koumln 2022 und 2 Koumln 2ndash7 (St Ottilien EOS Verlag 1987) 253ndash67 361ndash62 StevenL McKenzie The Trouble with Kings The Composition of the Book of Kings in the DeuteronomisticHistory (Leiden Brill 1991) 88ndash93 Hermann-Josef Stipp ldquoAhabs Buszlige und die Kompositiondes deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerksrdquo Bib 76 (1995) 471ndash97 Erhard Blum ldquoDie Nabotuuml-berlieferungen und die Kompositionsgeschichte der Vorderen Prophetenrdquo in Schriftauslegungin der Schrift Festschrift fuumlr Odil Hannes Steck ed Reinhard G Kratz Thomas Kruumlger and Kon-rad Schmid (Berlin de Gruyter 2000) 111ndash28 or Susanne Otto ldquoThe Composition of the Elijah-Elisha Stories and the Deuteronomistic Historyrdquo JSOT 27 (2003) 487ndash508


as components of the regnal frame and offer further insights into the develop-ment of the chronological concept found in the text

One such notable feature is the double synchronism for the accession ofHoshea 2Kgs 1530 synchronizes the beginning of his reign with the 20th yearof Jotham 171 with the 12th year of Ahaz As seen before the first synchronismdoes not agree with Jothamrsquos regnal year total of 16 years If the proposedreign length of 6 years for Ahaz is correct the second synchronism is impossibleas well It remains striking however that Hoshearsquos accession is synchronizedwith Jotham as well as with Ahaz

Another peculiarity concerns the account of Jothamrsquos reign in 2Kgs 15 Be-yond the formulaic components usually given for any king only two particularsof Jothamrsquos reignwhich is after all 16 years long are mentioned (a) constructionmeasures undertaken on a temple gate (1535b ןוילעההוהיתיברעשתאהנבאוה )and (b) the beginning of Aramean and North Israelite hostilities against Judah(1537 והילמרןבחקפתאוםראךלמןיצרהדוהיבחילשהלהוהילחהםההםימיב ) Thesame two issues recur in the account of Ahazrsquos reign albeit in much more detail2Kgs 165ndash9 relate the joined effort of Rezin and Pekah to force Ahaz into ananti-Assyrian coalition and the latterrsquos loyalty to the Assyrian king vv 10ndash 18 de-scribe various building measures at the Jerusalem temple first and foremost theerection of an altar based on a model in Damascus (an undertaking presented ina highly critical angle within the Book of Kings) Compared to Ahaz Jothamrsquos de-piction appears like an abridged and softened version of his highly problematicsuccessor Jothamrsquos fields of activity are the same he acts in a completely innoc-uous way but the information given remains completely vague as well

A third points concerns elements of the regnal frame esp the introductoryformulae for Jotham and Ahaz The evaluation of Jotham (2Kgs 153435a) con-tains nothing extraordinary It resembles the frequent type of assessment for Ju-dean kings that is positive to a limited extend and links the cultic policies of aking to those of his father⁴sup2 Ahaz on the other hand receives an unusually ex-tensive and highly negative evaluation (2Kgs 162bndash4) which connects him withthe kings of Israel and in the account of his sins with the later Manasseh (2Kgs163 cf 2Kgs 216)⁴sup3 This evaluation is in line with the critical tendency of theaccount as a whole

The other examples are Asa 1Kgs 1511 ff Jehoshaphat 1Kgs 2243 f Joash 2Kgs 123 f Amaziah2Kgs 143 f Azariah 2Kgs 153 f Cf Hans-Detlef Hoffmann Reform und Reformen Untersuchungen zu einem Grundthema derdeuteronomistischen Geschichtsschreibung (Zuumlrich TVZ 1980) 39ndash40 Sang-Won Lee ldquoDen Ortden JHWH erwaumlhlen wird hellip sollt ihr aufsuchenrdquo (Dtn 125) Die Forderung der Kulteinheit im Deu-teronomistischen Geschichtswerk (Diss Universitaumlt Tuumlbingen 2015) 93


On the other hand the biographical information provided for Ahaz in theintroductory formula is incomplete While Jothamrsquos formula contains the usualinformation (synchronistic date of accession age at accession regnal yeartotal residency the kingrsquos mother) Ahazrsquo introduction lacks any informationon his mother This is striking because all other introductory formulae for thekings of Judah (with the sole exception of Jehoram 2Kgs 816ndash 17 ⁴⁴) mentionthe kingrsquos mother ie her name as well as her origin andor patronym More-over Ahazrsquos age at his accession 20 years is the only round number amongall the Judean kings mentioned in the synchronistic account This might justbe a coincidence but could also hint at an artificial construction like theround numbers in the regnal year totals of David (2Sam 54) and Solomon(1Kgs 1142)

The following chart summarizes the textual phenomena described above

Jotham Ahazbiographical information complete specific incomplete genericevaluation generic specificnarrative account condensed

specific amp duplicatedetailed specific

The fact that among the two kings there is only one complete and specific set ofbiographical information and that the narrative account of Jotham comprisesmerely two notes both of which double and soften up the information givenfor Ahaz allow some insight into the content of the sources underlying the ac-count in the Book of Kings and the methods and contributions of its compiler Itseems that the compiler worked with a certain set of information which he triedto adjust and to complete according to the requirements of the establishedframework Assuming that contents of a specific nature point to data derivedfrom source material the latter might have included‒ The two names Jotham and Ahaz‒ Two figures for regnal years 16 years and 6 years⁴⁵‒ Possibly one figure for the age at accession‒ Data on one royal mother and‒ One account of the deeds of the king and the events during his reign

Here however information on another woman is provided the kingrsquos wife a daughter ofAhab (v 18) Regarding the possibility that Ahaz might have reigned 6 years instead of 16 see abovep 279


Presenting Jotham and Ahaz as two successive kings the compiler had to recon-struct what was missing‒ A second set of biographical information (age and the kingrsquos mother) Here

he used the material now provided for Jotham and constructed an introduc-tory formula for Ahaz leaving out the name of his mother because the re-quired information was lacking and (possibly) creating a round numberfor the kingrsquos age at the beginning of his reign

‒ A second account of the kingrsquos reign Here he used the extensive materialnow found for Ahaz and attributed similar activities and events to Jothamwhile depicting him as a less problematic king

This led to a critical evaluation being provided for Ahaz while Jotham receivedthe default evaluation of Judean kings who were not particularly bad but didnot distinguish themselves as cult reformers either The result was a rather color-less picture of Jotham and an artificially construed biographical frame for AhazHowever regardless of whether it was constructed to this aim or not it helped tobridge Pekahrsquos long reign of 20 years in the chronology ndash or at least a greater partof it for two years remained unaccounted for⁴⁶

If this reconstruction of the source material is correct it invites further spec-ulation Could it be that the information found there did not concern two consec-utive kings but in fact only one king for whom two different names were includ-ed⁴⁷ The fact that a king could bear multiple names is hardly surprising inancient Near Eastern contexts as is well known from the numerous attestationsof throne names in Egypt and Mesopotamia There are at least some indicationsthat attributing a new name to the king at the beginning of his reign was alsopracticed in Judah⁴⁸ Remarkably there are also two names for Jothamrsquos prede-

See above section 2 inconsistency (5) This was already proposed by Knut Tage Andersen ldquoNoch einmal die Chronologie der Kouml-nige von Israel und JudardquoSJOT 2 (1989) 1ndash45 who argued that Jotham and Ahaz are to be iden-tified and that there was only one Judean king between Azariah and Hezekiah ldquoSoviel ich sehekann aus diesem Zusammenfall nur die eine Schluszligfolgerung gezogen werden naumlmlich daszlig Jo-tham und Ahas historisch ein und dieselbe Person sind und zwar der Sohn von Koumlnig Ussia undKoumlnigin Jerusa (2 Koumln 153233) der die Koumlnigswuumlrde nach dem Vater uumlbernahmrdquo (18 emphasisin original) Irrespective of whether one can follow Gerhard von Rad ldquoDas judaumlische KoumlnigsritualrdquoTLZ 4(1947) 211ndash 16 in reconstructing a Judean coronation ceremony (cf the critical appraisal by Mar-kus Saur ldquoKoumlnigserhebungen im antiken Israelrdquo in Investitur- und Kroumlnungsrituale Herrschaft-seinsetzungen im kulturellen Vergleich eds Marian Steinicke and Stefan Weinfurter [Koumlln Boumlh-lau 2005] 29ndash42) he is probably right that carrying throne names was also common among the


cessor ndash Azariah and Uzziah⁴⁹ although the texts do not address the issue at allIf ldquoJothamrdquoand ldquoAhazrdquowere indeed listed as two different names of one king inthe sources underlying the synchronistic compilation this might be the reasonfor the extent of data mentioned above The data set only became ldquoincompleterdquowhen the compiler tried to construct a succession of two kings out of one Com-bined with the fact that according to 2Kgs 15 Azariah ruled for an unusuallylong time and that the transition to his successor is one of the few cases inwhich the text itself mentions particular circumstances which point to a coregen-cy it is conceivable that the two names refer to the period of coregency (Jotham)and ndash as a throne name ndash to the period of sole rule (Ahaz)⁵⁰ This could also bethe rationale behind the two figures for the reign length 16 years co-regency and6 years of sole rule

5 The Emergence of the ChronologicalConundrum

Building upon the descriptive (section 1) and analytical (sections 3 and 4) stepsundertaken so far it is now possible to present a synthesis and trace the literarydevelopment of the chronological conundrum in 2Kgs 15ndash 18

The collection of data on the Israelite kings which formed the basis of thesynchronistic chronology in the Book of Kings provided regnal year totals andsynchronistic accession dates With the exception of Pekah it probably con-tained the regnal year totals still extant in the Masoretic text With regards toPekah it may be assumed that the data set also included a date for the begin-ning of his reign as well as a regnal year total and subsequently an accessiondate for his successor Hoshea There is no reason to doubt the 52nd year of Azar-iah as the beginning of Pekahrsquos term One can only speculate about the date forHoshearsquos accession it might have been the 2nd year of Ahaz which would be rec-oncilable with the way the compiler of the synchronistic chronology conceptual-

Judean kings Texts like Isa 96 or Jer 236 presuppose it 2Kgs 2334 and 2417 report the renamingof Judean rulers by Egyptian or Babylonian kings Azariah 2Kgs 1421 151 6ndash8 17 23 27 Uzziah 2Kgs 1513 30 32 34 Isa 11 61 71 Hos 11Amos 11 Zech 145 2Chr 26 272 Notably in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Ahaz is mentioned as ldquoJehoahazrdquo ie withthe theophoric element in the beginning of his name as in Jotham Tadmor The Inscriptions ofTiglath-pileser III 170ndash 1 Summ 7 rev 11rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Ti-glath-pileser III no 47 rev 11rsquo) mIa-uacute-ha-zi KURIa-uacute-da-a-a


ized this period Accordingly Pekahrsquos original reign length would have been2 years (Fig 5)

At some point the length of Pekahrsquos reign was erroneously changed to 20years This change goes hand in hand with synchronizing Hoshearsquos accessionwith the 20th year of Jotham (2Kgs 1530) because Pekah and Jotham begantheir respective terms in the same year The consequence was a second synchron-ism for Hoshearsquos accessionWhether both changes took place together or one fol-lowed the other remains unknown

This however was the state of affairs (see above Fig 2) when the Israelitedata reached the compiler who tried to combine them with the regnal year totalsof the Judean kings He found the following synchronisms 52nd year of Azariahfor Pekahrsquos accession and probably the 2nd year of Ahaz for Hoshearsquos and com-bined these data with the regnal year totals he extracted from his Judean mate-rial ie 16 years for Jotham 6 years for Ahaz and 29 years for Hezekiah using thesynchronistic alignment of Hoshea and Hezekiah as an anchor (see aboveFig 4) In doing so he had to fill the long stretch of time created by the prolon-gation of Pekahrsquos reign to 20 years which could not be completely covered by theregnal years provided for the Judean kings

In a final step Ahazrsquo reign length was changed from 6 to 16 years (cf aboveFig 2) which contradicted a number of synchronisms but probably prompted thecorrection of the date for Hoshearsquos accession from the 2nd year of Ahaz to his 12th

yearThis reconstruction including the identification of Jotham and Ahaz seems to

aggravate the old crux in the chronological data of Hezekiah namely his age

Fig 5 Diagram showing the reconstructed chronological data for the kings of Israel Preparedby the author


when he came to the throne⁵sup1 There can be no doubt that Ahaz is Hezekiahrsquosfather this is confirmed by a seal impression reading הדוהיךלמזחאוהיקזחל ⁵sup2 Ifndash as proposed above ndash Jotham and Ahaz are one and the same king and the bio-graphical information provided for Jotham (2Kgs 1533) is likely to retain the orig-inal data JothamAhaz was 25 years old at the beginning of his reign With areign length of 6 years this would make him 31 when his 25-year-old son Heze-kiah succeeded him and this is highly unlikely Counting however from the be-ginning of a 16-year coregency with Azariah he would be 47 at his death and22 years old at the time Hezekiah was born In this case he fits in well withthe other Judean kings At the same time another related riddle is solved Azar-iah would have been 27 years old at the time his successor was born and not atthe extraordinary age of 43

Like many other issues of chronology the synthesis of the chronological co-nundrum in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 presented here requires a certain degree of conjectureand speculation It should be understood however as an attempt to meet thefirst of Alfred Jepsenrsquos two requirements for any chronological reconstructionin elucidating the interaction of the numerical data and tracing their develop-ment the tradition is respected ndash probably more so than by simply taking itas a point of departure using only a suitable portion of the data and discardingthe rest This reconstruction now paves the way for tackling the second demandie the question of how this chronological concept might relate to the externaldata

Recent treatments of the question were offered by Young Hezekiah 24ndash28 who argues thatAhaz was a brother of Jotham and by Heckl ldquoHiskiardquowho has doubts about the chronologicaldata provided in 2Kgs 162 One such bulla was found in the Ophel Excavations see Eilat Mazar ldquoA Seal Impressionof King Hezekiah from the Ophel Excavationsrdquo in The Ophel Excavations to the South of the Tem-ple Mount 2009ndash2013 Final Reports vol I ed Eilat Mazar (Jerusalem Shoham 2015) 629ndash40Similar seal impressions had appeared earlier on the antiquities market and were published byNahman Avigad Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Jeremiah Remnants of a Burnt Archive (Jerusa-lem Israel Exploration Society 1986) no 199 Robert Deutsch ldquoLasting Impressions New Bul-lae Reveal Egyptian Style Emblems on Judahrsquos Royal SealsrdquoBAR 28 (2002) 42ndash51 60ndash62 andFrank Moore Cross ldquoKing Hezekiahrsquos Seal Bears Phoenician ImageryrdquoBAR 25 (1999) 42ndash45 60


Steven L McKenzie

The Last Days of Israel ChronologicalConsiderations

1 Introduction

This chapter surveys what I would consider the three main chronological prob-lems in 2Kgs 15 and critiques solutions that have been offered for them I have nosolution of my own to offer except to suggest that the problems may be beyondcomplete resolutionsup1

The following table lists the kings of Israel from Jehursquos revolt to the fall of thekingdom and their counterparts in Judah according to the Book of Kings I beginwith Jehu because his assassination of the kings of Israel and Judah marks a si-multaneous starting point for the chronologies of the two kingdomssup2 There areseven regnal accounts in 2Kgs 15 five kings of Israel (Zechariah Shallum Mena-hem Pekahiah and Pekah) sandwiched by Uzziah and Jotham of Judah

Israel Judah

Jehu (Kgs ) ndash yrs Athaliah (Kgs ) ndash yrsJehoahaz (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs Joash (Kgs ) ndash yrsJehoash (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs Amaziah (Kgs ndash) ndash yrsJeroboam II (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs Uzziah (Azariah) (Kgs f ndash) ndash yrsZechariah (Kgs ndash) ndash mos Jotham (Kgs ndash) ndash yrsShallum (Kgs ndash) ndash mo Ahaz (Kgs ) ndash yrsMenahem (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs Hezekiah (Kgs ndash)

I wish to thank to Shuichi Hasegawa for organizing this conference and for inviting me to takepart in it It was a pleasure for me to meet Kristin Weingart at this conference Her intriguingpaper which is included in this volume does offer a set of proposals some of which arenew Since these are part of an ongoing project ldquoGezaumlhlte Geschichterdquo that is not yet publishedand fully available for study and consideration I offer no detailed critique here though I do citeher paper which she graciously provided to me with some comments My impression is that herwork is a step forward with valuable insights about certain aspects of the chronological difficul-ties in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 even though her overall solution is susceptible to some of the same criticismsas previous proposals The joint starting point remains whether Jehu or the Aramaean author of the Tel Dan inscrip-tion was responsible for the assassinations The editio princeps of the complete (reconstructed)inscription is Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh ldquoThe Tel Dan Inscription A New Fragmentrdquo IEJ45 (1995) 1ndash18 The controversies surrounding its interpretation are well beyond the scope ofthis paper

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-014

Continued

Israel Judah

Pekahiah (Kgs ndash) ndash yrsPekah (Kgs ndash) ndash yrsHoshea (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs

2 Chronological Discrepancies

The first problem is really a type or category of problems consisting of disagree-ments among the chronological data supplied in the chapter These are signifi-cant disparities in numbers that go beyond minor discrepancies of a year ortwo that also exist but might be explained by differences in record keeping orthe use of different calendarssup3 For instance the reference in 151 to AzariahUz-ziah taking the throne of Judah in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam of Israeldisagrees with the chronological references in 141ndash2 17 23 which indicate thefifteenth year of Jeroboam as that of Azariahrsquos accession

th year of Jeroboam

th year of Jeroboam

Azariah began to reign in

th of Jeroboamndash Amaziah (Azariahrsquos father) accedes in

nd (of ) ofJehoash (Jeroboamrsquos father) = Azariahrsquos accession in

th ofJeroboam Amaziah lives yrs after Jehoashrsquos death = Azar-iahrsquos accession in

th of Jeroboam Jeroboam accedes in

th (of ) of Amaziah = Azar-iahrsquos accession in

th of Jeroboam

The case of Menahem is particularly interesting in this regard His accession is evidently datedto Azariah Uzziahrsquos 39th year after Shallumrsquos one-month reign (1513ndash14) Azariah is creditedwith a 10-year reign in 1517 but his succession by his son Pekahiah in Azariahrsquos 50th year(1523) indicates a reign of 11 yearsWeingart in her chapter in this volume picks up on a sug-gestion by Gershon Galil The Chronology of the Kings of Israel amp Judah (Leiden Brill 1996) 62that this reflects a change from ante- to postdating in Israel under the influence of Assyrianpractice which distinguished the accession year from the first regnal year following the NewYear She strengthens the suggestion with the observation that the formulae for kings before Me-nahem reflect antedating while those after him reflect postdating But there are complicationsthat make the suggestion inconclusive (1) Galil actually argues that the change began alreadywith Joash (2) The records for quite a number of kings before Menahem are incomplete sothat the regular practice of antedating for them is largely supposition (3) Menahem was notthe first Israelite king to be an Assyrian vassal so it is not clear why a change in reckoningshould have begun during his reign

290 Steven L McKenzie

Similarly 158 13 17 agree with each other in dating Zechariahrsquos accession to Uz-ziahrsquos thirty-eighth year but they are at odds with 1417 23 which indicate thatZechariah acceded in Uzziahrsquos twenty-sixth year (since Uzziah acceded in the fif-teenth of Jeroboamrsquos forty-one years)

th year of Uzziah

th year of Uzziah

In the th of Azariah Zechariah

became king (reigns months) Uzziahrsquos accession in Jeroboamrsquos

th

(of ) means Zechariah (Jeroboamrsquos successor)accedes in Uzziahrsquos

th

Shallum accedes in Uzziahrsquos th

(reigns one month) Menahem accedes in Uz-ziahrsquos

th

Such discrepancies are not peculiar to 2Kgs 15 but are relatively common inKings especially when the different textual witnesses are taken into considera-tion A popular way of dealing with them has been to posit a combination ofchanging systems of record keeping along with coregencies This approach isidentified especially with Edwin R Thiele and his book The Mysterious Numbersof the Hebrew Kings⁴ The approach is methodologically problematic because itcannot be proven false and because its application is often arbitrary There ismoreover a subtle agenda that drives its popularity to show that the Biblersquos fig-ures are all accurate they are just based on different sources

In the initial volume of the Harvard Semitic Monographs published in 1968James Shenkelrsquos Chronology and Recensional Development in the Greek Text ofKings offered a different solution mdash a text critical one Shenkel argued againstThielersquos approach that the MTrsquos numbers were a systematic revision of the prim-itive and more consistent chronology preserved in the Old Greek (OG)⁵ Shenkelrsquosexplanation has been adopted over the past five decades by such eminent textcritics as Adrian Schenker and Julio Trebolle Very recent research howeverhas called this explanation into question on text-critical grounds In an articlepublished in the Trebolle Festschrift (2012) Ron Hendel argued that the OG re-

Edwin R Thiele The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Grand Rapids MI Kregel 1983rev edition) James Shenkel Chronology and Recensional Development in the Greek Text of Kings (Cam-bridge MA Harvard University Press 1968)

The Last Days of Israel Chronological Considerations 291

vised the MT chronology rather than the other way around⁶ Hendel explainshow in 1Kgs 16 the MT and OG construe the starting point of Omrirsquos reign differ-ently The difference becomes clear in 1629 where the MT dates Ahabrsquos accessionto the thirty-eighth year of Asa of Judah while the OG dates it to the second yearof Asarsquos son Jehoshaphat a difference of five years The reason for this differ-ence is that the MT construes the beginning of Omrirsquos twelve-year reign fromthe point in 1621 when half of the people followed Omri and half Tibni Thiswas according to 1615 the twenty-seventh year of Asa of Judah The OG onthe other hand dates Omrirsquos reign from the point after Tibni had died whichwas the thirty-first year of Asa The OGrsquos phrase after Tibni at the end of v 22makes its dating clear Hendel contends that the MTrsquos construal of v 23 was idi-osyncratic and therefore a kind of lectio difficilior It is therefore more likely tohave been altered by the OGrsquos more ldquoliteralrdquo construal than the other wayaround That literal interpretation in turn led to (hyper)correction of the chronol-ogy in the OG in a manner typical of Second-Temple scribal hermeneutics

I would add an argument in support of Hendelrsquos case based on 2Kgs 816⁷The chart in Fig 1 illustrates the discussion that follows

The OG is not extant here but based on the foregoing figures in the OG chro-nology it would have had Jehoram of Judah taking the throne in the second yearof Ahaziah of Israel and reigning eleven years⁸ Since Ahaziahrsquos reign spans theend of Jehoshaphatrsquos and the beginning of Jehoramrsquos in the OG the proper placefor the account of Jehoramrsquos reign according to the OG chronology would havebeen immediately before the beginning of Israelite Joramrsquos ie between 2Kgs117 and 118 Not coincidentally this is where a single instance of OG chronologyin MT is found what Shenkel calls ldquoa precious witness to the OG chronology in aHebrew textrdquo⁹ The OG account of Jehoram was always in 2Kgs 8 where the MThas it because of the occurrence of two historical presentsmdashdistinguishing fea-tures of the OGmdashin 822 24 as Shenkel points out This means that the OG place-ment and the OG numbers are at odds The OG account of the reign of Jehoram isin the wrong place according to the ldquoprinciplesrdquo of the composition of Kings The

Ron Hendel ldquoThe Two Editions of the Royal Chronology in Kingsrdquo in Textual Criticism andDead Sea Scrolls Studies in Honour of Julio Trebolle Barrera ed Andreacutes Piquer Otero andPablo A Torijano Morales (Leiden Brill 2012) 99ndash114 The argument is more fully developed in an article entitled ldquoThe Priority of the MT Chronologyin Kingsrdquo that I have written for the forthcoming Festschrift for P Kyle McCarter So Shenkel Chronology 37ndash38 68ndash82 Shenkel Chronology 74 The notice in the Lucianic witnesses at 117b in agreement with MT ishexaplaric and therefore the result of secondary adjustment


only way this could have happened is if the MT chronology was the older oneThe OG introduced its revised figures into the MTrsquos placement

The systematic difference between the OG and MT chronologies is peculiarto the Omri dynasty and came to an end with Jehursquos simultaneous slaughter ofthe kings of both Israel and Judah in 2Kgs 9 It therefore has no direct bearingon 2Kgs 15 Indirectly however this evidence shows that the MT chronology isprimary We must contend with the MT figures in 2Kgs 15 and cannot dismissthem as the result of scribal revision

3 Regnal Totals

The totals for the kings of Israel and Judah are far apart for the period from thebeginning of AzariahUzziahrsquos reign to the fall of Samaria as shown in the fol-lowing table

Fig 1 The differences between the OG and MT chronologies Prepared by the author


Judah Israel

AzariahUzziah ndash Jeroboam ndash sup1⁰Jotham ndash Zechariah ndash monthsAhaz ndash Shallum ndash monthHezekiah ndash sup1sup1 Menahem ndash

Pekahiah ndash

Pekah ndash

Hoshea ndash

TOTAL years TOTAL years months

Azariahrsquos long reign and the administration of part of it by Jotham because of hisfatherrsquos skin disease (v 5) are unusual features of his account that have suggest-ed a partial solution to this problem of the totals Alfred Jepsen proposed that allof Jothamrsquos reign and part of Ahazrsquos as well were included within Azariahrsquossup1sup2 Hepointed out the consistency in the ages of the kings of Judah at the births of theiroldest sons as determined from the ages given for their successors when they as-cended to the throne The average age of Judahite kings at the time of the birthsof their oldest sons was twentysup1sup3 Jotham is reported to have been twenty-five years old when he became king (1533) Assuming that his father Azariahwas about twenty when Jotham was born he would have been forty-five at Jo-thamrsquos accession Since Azariah himself became king at age 16 (2Kgs 152) Jo-thamrsquos accession would have taken place in Azariah twenty-ninth regnal yearThis was following Jepsen the year that Azariah became afflicted with skin dis-ease and was removed to his quarantined residence (v 5)sup1⁴ The remaining twen-

Numbered from the year of Uzziahrsquos accession as calculated from 1417 23 The 84 years assigned to the reigns of Azariah Jotham and Ahaz are too long for the allottedperiod which covers 61ndash73 years Figuring the start of Azariahrsquos reign ca 788 and the start ofHezekiahrsquos reign in 727 = 61 years If the beginning of Hezekiahrsquos reign is dated to 715 the differ-ence is 73 years 2Kgs 1810 dates the fall of Samaria to Hezekiahrsquos sixth year (721 + 6 = 727) How-ever 1813 dates the invasion of Sennacherib (701 BCE) to Hezekiahrsquos 14th year marking 715 as thestart of his reign Alfred Jepsen ldquoZur Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda Eine Uumlberpruumlfungrdquo in Un-tersuchungen zur israelitisch-juumldischen Chronologie ed A Jepsen and R Hanhart (Berlin deGruyter 1964) 1ndash48 The exceptions are readily explained Jepsen ldquoZur Chronologierdquo 43 The exact sense of תישפחהתיבב is uncertain The expression occurs in the HB only here andin variant form in the 2Chr 2621 parallel Because ישפח designates a person who is free fromslavery (Exod 212 5 26 27 Deut 1512 13 18 Jer 349ndash 11 14 16 Isa 586 Job 319) or exemptfrom taxes and conscription (1Sam 1725) the present passage has been construed to meanthat Azariah was exempted from kingly duties Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings


ty-three years attributed to his reign then included all of Jothamrsquos sixteen yearsplus the first seven years of Ahazrsquos reign

Jepsenrsquos theory is attractive for its reduction of the total regnal years of thekings of Judah for the period from Azariah to the fall of Samaria from 90 to 67years which is very close to the total (68) for Israelite kings during the same pe-riod However there are some caveats First it is clear that this situation wasatypical and should not be seen as a license for postulating coregencies through-out the history of the monarchy Also it may not be accurate to cast Jothamrsquos gov-erning ( טפש ) as ldquoco-regencyrdquo since the text does not state that he was made kingat this time and seems to avoid the root ךלמ Thus however the overlap betweenUzziah and Jotham was understood by contemporaries 2Kgs 157 construes theirldquoreignsrdquo as sequential employing the regular succession formulae and indicat-ing thereby that Jotham had an independent reign which began with the death ofhis father (v 7)

Another serious problem is that despite the chronological assistance ren-dered by Jepsenrsquos theory sixty-seven years is still too large a total for the periodsince the twenty years ascribed to Pekah must be reduced to six or seven as wewill see yielding a total of fifty-four or fifty-five regnal years for Israel in this pe-riod The total for Judahrsquos kings must therefore be further reduced by a dozenyears in order to correspond This need for further reduction is the impetus be-hind appeals to additional coregencies though the evidence for them is lackingIt seems more likely that one of the recorded numbers is erroneous The sugges-tion to read six instead of sixteen in for the length of Jothamrsquos reign (1533) or ofAhazrsquos (162) may have meritsup1⁵ While there is no textual evidence for the emen-dation it is suspicious that both Jotham and Ahaz are credited with sixteen-year

(New York Doubleday 1988) 166 (citing Qimhi) James A Montgomery A Critical and ExegeticalCommentary on the Books of Kings (Edinburgh TampT Clark) 448 However the occurrence ofbtḫpṯt in the Baal Cycle (Manfried Dietrich Oswald Lorenz and Joseacute Sanmartiacuten Die keilalphabe-tischen Texte aus Ugarit einschlieszliglich der keilalphabetischen Texte auszligerhalb Ugarits Teil 1Transkription [Kevelaer Butzon amp Bercker 1976] no 4 VIII 7ndash9) in the context of descent tothe underworld (wrd btḫpṯtrsquoarṣ tsprbyrdmrsquoarṣ) suggests some other kind of meaning My ren-dering tentatively follows Wilhelm Rudolph ldquoUssias ʽHaus der Freiheitrsquordquo ZAW 89 (1977)418ndash20 who suggests ldquohouse of freedomrdquo as a euphemism actually meaning ldquohouse of no free-domrdquo ie a place of isolation or quarantine Unfortunately he does not consider the Ugariticevidence John Gray I amp II Kings A Commentary (Philadelphia PA Westminster 1970 2nd edition)628ndash29 and Gwilym H Jones 1 and 2 Kings (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1984) 531 proposereading 6 for 16 in 1533Weingart in her chapter in this volume following Claus Schedl ldquoTextk-ritische Bemerkungen zu den Synchronismen der Koumlnige von Israel und Judardquo VT 12 (1962)90ndash93 suggests it for Ahaz


reigns In that case Uzziahrsquos fifty-two years would have coincided with the reignsof Jotham and Ahaz and the first year of Hezekiah yielding a total of fifty-sevenyears for the period If we grant the possibility that Uzziah may have been eigh-teen when Jotham was born this total is reduced to fifty-five matching Israelrsquostotal

It is obvious at this point however that the process has become quite spec-ulative Thus while there seems to be something to Jepsenrsquos theory the furtheradjustments required to make it work remind us that it is still very much hypo-thetical

4 Pekahiah (1523ndash26) and Pekah (1527ndash31)sup1⁶

MT and GB ascribe two years to Pekahiahrsquos reign while GL reads ten The num-bers in 1527 32 accord with the two-year figure but 171 (MT) assumes a ten-year reign for Pekahiah Ten years is impossible according to the Assyrian evi-dence The annals of Tiglath-pileser III (745ndash727 BCE) mention Menahemrsquos pay-ment of tribute in 738 BCEsup1⁷ The annals and other inscriptions also note Tiglath-pileserrsquos installation of Hoshea as king of Israel in 73130 after the Assyrian cam-paigns against Pekah and Razon and the conquest of Damascussup1⁸ This leaves no

1530b is secondary It has Hoshea accede in the 20th year of Jotham and is in obvious con-tradiction of v 33 where Jotham reigns 16 years It reflects secondary calculation based on vv 2732 where Pekah becomes king in the same year as Jotham though slightly before him It is alsoabsent from LXXL and is not a regular feature of conspiracy notices like the one in v 30a Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011)nos 14 27 32 and 35 The inscription from Iran (text 35) is undated However its list of tributepayers is apparently earlier since it mentions Tubail (Itto-Baal) as king of Tyre instead of hissuccessor Hiram who is mentioned in the annals (text 32 and reconstructed by Tadmor and Ya-mada in texts 14 27)William H Shea ldquoMenahem and Tiglath-pileser IIIrdquo JNES 37 (1978) 43ndash49and Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notes on the Kingdoms of Israel and Judahin the Eighth Century BCrdquo VT 36 (1986) 81 date the Iran inscription to 740 BCE and correlate itwith the notice of Menahemrsquos payment in 2Kgs 1519 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and ChronologicalNotesrdquo 82 argues further that Menahem made a second tribute payment in 738 and that thisis the payment recorded in the annals Shea ldquoMenahemrdquo 49 denies that a second paymentis necessary and thinks that Menahemrsquos name was simply listed again as part of a general sum-mary But his argument does not adequately take into consideration the difference in genre be-tween the annals and the non-annalistic text The change in the name of the Tyrian king indi-cates the different settings of the two documents and nullifies the attempt of Thiele MysteriousNumbers 125ndash28 to date Menahemrsquos payment early to 743 BCE See especially Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notesrdquo 71ndash74


more than nine years (738ndash730 inclusive) for the reigns of both Pekahiah andPekah where MT assigns twenty-two years two for Pekahiah and twenty forPekah The main problem is the ascription of a twenty-year reign to Pekah

Here several solutions have been proposed Since the two names Pekahiahand Pekah are the same the suggestion was made some time ago that they werehistorically identicalsup1⁹ If so it would reduce the number of kings of Israel forthis period and might help with the chronological problems by reducing thetotal number of regnal years required for the two kings Nevertheless thereare cogent reasons for distinguishing them First the formula lay with his ances-tors used for Menahem indicates royal successionsup2⁰ That is Pekahiah was Me-nahemrsquos son while Pekah has a distinct patronymic Remaliah Then there isthe radical difference between the two kings embodied in the account of acoup drsquoeacutetat and assassination as well as the change of policy toward AssyriaPekahiah might have altered his fatherrsquos pro-Assyrian stance but there wouldbe no need to hide this by inventing another king with the same name and anoverthrow Finally v 25 raises the possibility that Pekah was from Gilead inTransjordan and hence had an entirely different origin from Pekahiahrsquos Appa-rently therefore the similarity of the names is coincidental or is to be explainedin some other waysup2sup1

Among the other possibilities for explaining Pekahrsquos inordinately long reignthat have been put forward the simplest is that the number twenty is a textualerrorsup2sup2 This suggestion cannot be dismissed as easily as Narsquoaman would have itin view of the evidence for textual and chronological variation in Kings and es-pecially in the present chaptersup2sup3 Still a clear understanding of how the errormight have happened is necessary before this proposal can be fully convincingsup2⁴

Fritz Hommel ldquoAssyriardquo in A Dictionary of the Bible vol 1 ed James Hastings (EdinburghTampT Clark 1898) 186 argues that Pekahiah and Pekah were the same king who reigned only2 years Matthew J Suriano The Politics of Dead Kings (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2010) Dennis Olson ldquoPekahrdquo in The Anchor Bible Dictionary vol 5 ed David Noel Freedman (NewYork Doubleday 1992) 214ndash 15 suggests that it was a means for Pekah to claim legitimacy William Foxwell Albright ldquoThe Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of Israelrdquo BASOR 100(1945) 21ndash22William H Barnes 1ndash2 Kings (Carol Stream IL Tyndale House 2012) 157 For addi-tional scholars who adopt this position see Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notesrdquo 75n 9 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notesrdquo 75 The reading of ten ( רשע ) instead of twenty ( םירשע ) proposed by Gray Kings 64ndash65 and Mar-tin Rehm Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige (Wuumlrzburg Echter 1982) 150 does not help because it isstill more than the time allotted by the Assyrian evidence for Pekahrsquos reign The suggestion ofGeorg Hentschel 2 Koumlnige (Wuumlrzburg Echter 1985) 71 that 16 years were added to Pekahrsquos


Perhaps the most widely accepted explanation assumes the genuineness ofthe twenty-year reading and argues that it includes years spent by Pekah as theruler of a rival kingdom in Transjordan beginning with the accession of Mena-hem if not the end of Jeroboam IIrsquos reignsup2⁵ Scholars who favor this view findallusions to the division in Kings and the Prophetssup2⁶ But there is no clear refer-ence in Kings to this division as there was for the factions of Zimri Tibni andOmri (1Kgs 16) A more serious problem is the reference in v 25 to Pekah as Pe-kahiahrsquos šālicircš It is hard to believe that Pekah would have served as the adjutantfor two kings (Menahem and Pekahiah) while he was head of a rival kingdomOne pair of commentators even suggests that Pekahiah tried to solve the problemof Pekahrsquos rivalry by giving him the rulership of Gileadsup2⁷ Galil recognizes theproblem and surmises that Pekah was an official appointed by Jeroboam IIover Gilead and that the twenty years of his regnal tenure are calculated fromthat appointmentsup2⁸

Two other proposals are similar to the rival kingdom theorysup2⁹ One holds thatPekah considered himself the legitimate heir of the Jehu dynasty and thereforecounted his regnal years from the end of Zechariahrsquos or even Jeroboam IIrsquosreign ignoring the reigns of Menahem and Pekahiahsup3⁰ Alternatively an early

4-year reign in an effort to accommodate the 16 years attributed to Jotham of Judah after it wasforgotten that Jothamrsquos years were incorporated within his fatherrsquos (following Jepsenrsquos theory) isingenious but unprovable and unfalsifiable This view was conceived by Carl Lederer Die biblische Zeitrechnung vom Auszuge aus Aumlgypt-en bis zum Beginne der babylonischen Gefangenschaft (Erlangen Kleeberger 1888) 135ndash38 de-veloped by H J Cook ldquoPekahrdquo VT 14 (1964) 121ndash35 and advanced by Thiele Mysterious Num-bers 129ndash32 Cf James Maxwell Miller and John H Hayes A History of Ancient Israel and Judah(Louisville KY London Westminster John Knox 2006 2nd edition) 370ndash72 Miller and Hayes History 371ndash2 appeal to the statement in 1537 that Pekah with Razon hadbegun harassing Judah already in the reign of Jotham when Pekah would not yet have been onthe throne in Samaria The observation is astute but as they go on to point out the organizationof the material in Kings is often more theological than chronological Pierre Buis Le Livre desRois (Paris Librairie Lecoffre 1997) 244ndash45 finds an allusion to the divided North in the refer-ence to Manasseh devouring Ephraim and vice-versa in Isa 919ndash20 It is not clear though thatthe intertribal strife alluded to in this passage entails a separate Transjordan kingdom Richard D Patterson and Hermann J Austel ldquo1 2 Kingsrdquo The Expositorrsquos Bible Commentaryvol 3 (Grand Rapids MI Zondervan 2005 revised edition) 887 They actually refer to Pekahiahldquobringing Pekah into a position of prominencerdquo but in context this must mean the rule over Gi-lead Galil Chronology 65ndash66 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notesrdquo 76ndash80 W J Chapman ldquoThe Problem of Inconsequent Post-Dating in II Kings XV 13 17 and 23rdquoHUCA 2 (1925) 59


chronographer who considered Menahem and Pekahiah as usurpers countedback from the beginning of Pekahrsquos reign to the end of the Jehu dynasty and at-tributed the intervening years to Pekah Narsquoaman finds support for these theoriesin the supposition that both Jehu and Pekah along with Elijah and Elisha werefrom Gilead and that they all reflect a Gileadite strain of opposition to the Omr-ides and then to Menahem and Pekahiah as interlopers The theory is ingeniousand may be on to something in its perception of Gileadite roots behind thesecharacters But again there are questions Elijah and Elisha are not always por-trayed as opponents of the king There is also no indication in Kings that Pekahwas related to the Jehuids or had any grounds for being considered the legitimateheir of that dynasty In short the reason for the attribution of twenty years toPekahrsquos reign remains obscure Fortunately it does not seriously affect recon-struction of the overall chronology but only because it is clear from non-biblicalevidence that we are dealing with a period of at most nine years (738ndash73130)rather than the twenty-two years that Kings ascribes to Pekahiahrsquos and Pekahrsquosreigns

To conclude there is no clear solution for these chronological problems in2Kgs 15While there were no doubt isolated scribal errors these problems go be-yond text-critical solutions There may have been genuine sources containinghistorical data behind the regnal formulae in 2Kgs 15sup3sup1 but they were eitherbadly corrupted or badly misunderstood by author of Kings Full restoration ap-pears to be an impossibility The explanations for Uzziahrsquos extraordinarily longreign and for the reigns of Pekahiah and Pekah for all the advantages theyoffer are essentially scholarly conjectures The main point of relevance for thetopic of this conference is that chronological data preserved in 2Kgs 15 the dens-est collection of reports about the kings of the ldquolast days of Israelrdquo are essential-ly unusable for historical reconstruction

See Weingartrsquos chapter in this volume which proposes that the chronological data in 2Kgs15ndash 18 are based on a list of regnal years and synchronistic accession years of Israelite kingsand a set of regnal years for Judahite kings


Part VI Working with the Book of Kingsthe Narrative

Christian Frevel

Wicked Usurpers and the Doom of Samaria

Further Views on the Angle of 2 Kings 15ndash17

1 Preliminary Remarks on the Credibilityof Details in Historiography

In this paper I will argue that the chaotic portrayal of the last days of the king-dom of Israel follows the Judean bias more than it accurately reflects the courseof historical events in the second half of the eighth century BCE While some ofthe information is historically correct the general impression is that the biblicaldescription is intended to smear the northern state and its legitimacy According-ly the general tendency in portraying the Northern Kingdom is to emphasize thecoups in the last 25 years in Samaria The usual assumption that the greater partof information ndash particularly that given in 2Kgs 15 ndash is drawn from Samarian an-nalssup1 is misleading This assumption is based on the principle that the biblicalrecord is an accurate representation of history rather than being largely invent-ed The biblical text is assumed to be correct unless strong arguments speakagainst it This a priori assumption that derives from credibility assessmentsof testimonies in legal proceedings has to be questioned in many respectswhen it comes to historiography Even detailed information can be inventedHowever this does not necessarily mean that details indicate only the fictive in-ventiveness of authors In this aspect one has to agree with William G Deverrsquosstatement that details have to be ldquoleft in the realm of possibility unless they ap-pear so fantastic that they lack any credibilityrdquosup2 But one has to bear in mind thatnot everything that is possible is probable and not everything that is credible isfactual

This chapter was language-edited by Denise Bolton (Munich)

See eg Antoon Schoors The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the Eighth and Seventh Centu-ries BCE (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2013) 12 ldquoThe accounts of these usurpa-tions and other events must have been taken from some source most likely the aforementionedannals (1510 14 16 19ndash20 25 29ndash30)rdquo William G Dever Beyond the Texts An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (At-lanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2017) 366

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-015

However the opposite a priori assumption that gives credibility to the extra-biblical accounts is just as bad Hence it is necessary to discuss aspects of his-toricity literary composition and tendencies of presentation (ldquoDarstellungsten-denzenrdquo) alike The aim of this discussion is not to prove the biblical accountright or wrong but rather to evaluate its probability and accuracy I use the por-trayal of the last kings of Israel in 2Kgs 15 as a test case and I will demonstratethe accountrsquos bias

While most of the studies have engaged in the trouble of dating and chronol-ogy fewer studies have taken a closer look at the biblical representation of theeighth century BCE in 2Kgs 15 which is highly biased The chapter mentionsseven kings of Israel in total including the last king of the Nimshide dynasty Ze-chariah who is followed by the reigns of Shallum Menahem Pekahiah Pekahand finally the last king Hoshea In focusing on the reported revolts the presentpaper will not so much engage in chronological issues This is not only due to thefact that the chronology is dealt with masterfully in this volume by Kristin Wein-gart and Stephen L McKenzie it is also on methodological account because Ihave sincere doubts that we can fix the biblical chronology in the Book ofKings in exact figures The following overview does not intend to settle the chro-nological issues under debatesup3 but is meant to provide a rough framework forthe events discussed

Kingrsquos name Length of reign according to the Bible Assumed historical framework

Zechariah months BCEShallum month ndash BCEMenahem years ndash BCEPekahiah years ndash BCEPekah years ndash BCEHoshea years (following Kgs ) ndash BCE

The lengthy presentation of the decline of the Northern Kingdom consists of24 verses comprising almost 15 years up to the reign of the last king HosheaOn the one hand apart from the great reflection chapters and the narrativesin the Book of Kings no other period is characterized so extensively in historio-graphical respect On the other hand the historical information given in the an-nalistic script is scarce no particular background of the four revolts is given andthe Assyrians are mentioned only twice first in the reign of Menahem and thenin the reign of Pekah The substantial loss of territory in 73332 BCE in the 13th

Cf Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2016) 161ndash63

304 Christian Frevel

and 14th palucirc both named as a-na KURDi-maš-qa⁴ is related in almost only onesentence in 2Kgs 1529

The verse lists the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser capturing cities in the northIjon Abel-beth-maacah Janoah Kedesh Hazor Gilead and Galilee The biblicallist concludes with ldquoall the land of Naphtalirdquoand a note on the mass deportationof people to Assyria ( הרושאםלגיו ) Although the report of the 12th palucirc is missingin the Kalḫu Annals the Assyrian sources give some information on the 12th palucirc(a-na KURPi-liš-ti ldquoagainst [the Land of] Philistiardquo) and the 13th palucirc (a-na KURDi-maš-qa ldquoagainst [the land of] Damascusrdquo) and the subjugation of these landsHowever more detailed information on the annexation of the northern territoryis completely missing⁵ No further information is given on the political status ofSamaria after the campaigns of Tiglath-Pileser III let alone the status of theprovince after the conquest of Samaria

Some peculiarities accompany the portrayal of the kings⁶ While it holdstrue that the burial of the northern king is not generally part of the annalisticframework⁷ the burial is mentioned with Baasha (1Kgs 166) Omri (1Kgs1628) Ahab (1Kgs 2237) Jehu (2Kgs 1035) Jehoahaz (2Kgs 139) Joash (2Kgs1313) and (if we accept the originality of the Antiochene text which attestsκαι εταφη εν Σαμαρεια)⁸ for Jeroboam II in 4Kgdms 1429 ndash he is the last king bur-

For a proposed ordering of the campaigns see Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Cam-paigns in 734ndash732 BC Historical Background of Isa 7 2 Kgs 15ndash 16 and 2 Chr 27ndash28rdquo Bib 87(2006) 153ndash70 esp 157ndash61 Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assy-ria Critical Edition with Introductions Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem The Israel Acad-emy of Sciences and Humanities 1994) 232ndash82 For the Assyrian point of view see the textual evidence assembled in Tadmor Inscriptions27ndash215 and Manfred Weippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament (Goumlttingen Vanden-hoeck amp Ruprecht 2010) further Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Summary Inscription 9ndash 10(2117F)rdquo in The Context of Scripture vol 2 Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical WorldedWilliam W Hallo and Kyle Lawson Younger Jr (Leiden Brill 2000) 291ndash92 For a quick over-view see William W Hallorsquos Introduction in Hallo and Younger The Context of Scripture vol 2xxindashxxvi Heather D Baker ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrdquo in RlA 13 ed Michael P Streck (2014) 22Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC)and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011)2ndash18 232ndash37 Note further the formula of the ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo (2Kgs 159 24 םעבריתואטחמרסאל 2Kgs 1518

םעבריתואטחלעמרסאל 2Kgs 1528 םעבריתואטח־ןמרסאל the evaluation formula can be foundwith Zechariah Menahem Pekaiah Pekah It is lacking with Shallum and Hoshea (in 2Kgs 17) Notes on the burial are missing for Jeroboam Nadab Elah Simri Ahaziah Joram JeroboamII (MT) and all following kings Natalio Fernandez Marcos and Joseacute Ramoacuten Busto Saiz El Texto Antioqueno De la Biblia GriegaII 1ndash2 Reyes (Madrid CSIC 1992) 125

Wicked Usurpers and the Doom of Samaria 305

ied in Samaria Any further notice of burial is missing particularly for the lastkings of Israel This already underlines that the composition of 2Kgs 15 is specialThe murdered kings do not ldquopass awayrdquo and are not even buried For Menahemthe only king who had a legal successor with his son Pekahiah the pass-away-formula is used ויתבא־םעםחנמבכשיו (2Kgs 1522) but no burial is mentioned Be-sides the evaluation formula which is lacking for Shallum and emendated forthe reign of Hoshea it is the formulaic expression of the regicide which is strik-ingly similar with all four revolts (Shallum Menahem Pekah Hoshea) includ-ing the phrase לערשק (lacking with Menahem) הכנ and the following phrase

ויתחתךלמיווהתימיו ⁹

Shallum v ויתחתךלמיווהתימיוםע־לבקוהכיושבי־ןבםלשוילערשקיו

Menahem v b ויתחתךלמיווהתימיוןורמשבשיבי־ןבםולש־תאךיו

Pekah v ויתחתךלמיווהתימיו]hellip[ןורמשבוהכיוושילשוהילמר־ןבחקפוילערשקיו

Hoshea v a ויתחתךלמיווהתימיווהכיווהילמר־ןבחקפ־לעהלא־ןבעשוהרשק־רשקיו

Table 1 The four revolts in 2Kgs 15

The verb רשק ldquoto bind (together)rdquo in the G-stem is the technical term used forconspiracies particularly for military coups Significantly it is used in an inten-sifying compound with the noun רשק for Hoshea The verb is also employedfor Baasha (1Kgs 1527) Zimri (1Kgs 169 20) Jehu (2Kgs 914 109) Shallum(2Kgs 1510 15) and the rebellions against Athaliah Joash Amaziah andAmon (2Kgs 1119 1220 1419 2123ndash24)

In the following I will try to evaluate the upheavals and regicides in the con-text of the portrayal of the northern monarchy 1Kgs 12ndash2Kgs 17

2 The General Assessment of the Northas Unstable Entity

The designation of the Northern Kingdom as unstable is deliberate Of the20 kings (including the unlucky Tibni who ndash following 1Kgs 1622 ndash was dis-placed allegedly without reigning as king) one half are irregular or illegitimatesuccessors (Jeroboam I Baasha Zimri Tibni Omri Jehu Shallum Menahem

For the formula see also Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fall According to2 Kings 15rdquo Bib 953 (2014) 321ndash46


Pekah Hoshea)sup1⁰ This is in stark contrast to the supposed continuity of the Da-vidic dynasty in Jerusalem The lengthy reign of Ahaz who survived almost fourIsraelite kings clearly underlines the contrast between stability and volatilityThe historic background of this characteristic on both sides is difficult to evalu-ate in particular While former studies in the history of kingdoms took the con-tinuity of the Davidic kingdom for granted and the vicissitude of the Israelitemonarchy as a historical characteristic of this political entitysup1sup1 one has to bemore cautious I have argued elsewhere that the uninterrupted continuity ofthe Davidic dynasty is a Judean construct at least before King Ahaz in Jerusa-lemsup1sup2 As regards the northern monarchy we have indications that the Omrides(Omri Ahab Ahaziah and Jehoram) and the Nimshides (Jehu Jehoahaz JoashJeroboam II and Zechariah) formed dynasties which reigned continuously over50 or even 100 years

All northern kings are portrayed as villains and the Deuteronomists donot judge even a single ruler positively making the assumption untenable thatregicide was in fact the norm for the succession of power Particularly if readagainst the background of the economic and political success of the NorthernKingdom one cannot take the volatility as described in the biblical accountsas an evaluative starting point On the other hand the most successful periodsunder the reign of the Omrides and Nimshides are portrayed as dynasticallymore stable so the biblical descriptions may have some foundation in historicalfact But strikingly upheavals and regicides increase in the last 25 years of thekingdom of Samaria a fact that was emphasized by Peter Dubovskyacute as part ofthe Deuteronomistic reasoning regarding Samariarsquos demise ldquothe biblical textpoints to the first cause of the downfall of Samariardquosup1sup3 Although the presentpaper has profited very much from Dubovskyacutersquos sophisticated analysis the sug-gestion that 2Kgs 15 not only ldquowashes dirty laundryrdquo but gives an implicitcause for the fall of Samaria in historical respect calls for some critique Hispaper aims to understand the ldquodynamics latent in the society of the Northern

Based on various arguments Peter Dubovskyacute counts seven revolts during that time in thenorth He sees the number as deliberate ldquoin order to convey the idea of completenessrdquo Du-bovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 325 Although this is a tempting argument I doubt that the num-ber of actual revolts was reduced in order to reach the number seven I see in particular theexclusion of Omri as problematic see below The impression is emphasized if the instability is compared against the long reigns of Azar-iah and Ahaz Frevel Geschichte Israels 178 228 Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 326


Kingdom which hellip led to its fallrdquosup1⁴ which is at the end itself a kind of a Deuter-onomistic approach by taking the instability of the Northerners for granted Butisnrsquot northern instability as a general feature and a lsquobirth defectrsquo more rhetorical-ly true than it is factually true The ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo that drives the critique inthe biblical portrayal of northern history is an invention of tradition rather thanit is historically grounded The term ldquoinvention of traditionrdquo that Eric Hobsbawmintroduced into the historianrsquos vocabulary denotes supposed facts that evolve tomythic power in forming ldquohistoryrdquo These ldquofactsrdquo can be demonstrated as beingprojected backwards if not invented at allsup1⁵ Recent evaluations of the ldquosin of Jer-oboamrdquo point exactly in that directionsup1⁶ I have argued elsewhere that JeroboamIrsquos reign is in fact an invention to install a damaged eponym and to mark thebirth of the Northern Kingdom as corrupted (see further below) Thus one shouldnot build historiography on this highly colored portrayal to reconstruct deephistorical structures Moreover had the coups drsquoeacutetat actually ldquoravaged the North-ern Kingdomrdquo as Dubovskyacute is ready to assume Assessed from the archaeologi-cal evidence this evaluation remains doubtful While Dubovskyacute can be praisedfor his detailed discussion his blending of literary and historical analyses isopen to some methodological critique However although being more skepticalI agree with Dubovskyacute in attempting to get somewhat behind the rhetoric of2Kgs 15

My approach to 2Kgs 15 is firstly to evaluate the literary design of the presen-tation and not to buy into its bias too quickly And if historical information islacking from the extra-biblical accounts it should not be added from the Deu-teronomistic narrative 1Kgs 15ndash 17 forms an unfavorable framework to the histo-ry of SamariaIsrael and does not aim to be a proper historical account Howev-er although most of the defamatory information is suspicious there are actuallyno strong indications to question the biblical data for Israel in principle Onlysome information can be proved more or less wrong by extra-biblical sources

Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 321 See Eric J Hobsbawm ldquoIntroduction Inventing Traditionsrdquo in The Invention of Tradition edEric J Hobsbawm and Terence O Ranger (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1983) 1ndash14 See Frevel Geschichte Israels 148ndash51 231 Angelika Berlejung ldquoTwisting Traditions Pro-grammatic Absence-Theology for the Northern Kingdom in I Kgs 1226ndash33 (the lsquoSin of Jero-boamrsquo)rdquo JNSL 35 (2009) 1ndash42


3 Destroyers Subversive Forces andRevolutions The North as a Chaotic Entity

While it is not possible to go into every detail in this essay I will now take a clos-er look at the portrayal of the northern state I will briefly address each of theten non-dynastic irregular rulers of the Northern Kingdom with a short com-ment This is to demonstrate the general tendency to devalue and denouncethe North on the one hand and to highlight certain characteristics in the partic-ular portrayals on the other hand My thesis is that the portrayal of Israel as anunstable entity which is shaped by a chain of revolts is more or less invented itis fabrication rather than fact

31 Jeroboam I

From its very beginning in 1Kgs 11ndash 14 the history of the North is already prob-lematic When does it become reliable If we accept that with regard to histor-icity there was no United Monarchy (in the sense of a state that covered boththe territory of Judah and Samaria or an even larger territory that includedthe Negev Shephelah the Mediterranean coast the hill country of Ephraimand Gilboa and even Galilee Bashan and Gileadsup1⁷) then there was no divisionof ldquokingdomsrdquo at all The struggle between Jeroboam I and Rehoboam over thesuccession to Solomonrsquos throne the opposition between the northern and south-ern tribes and the historical reconstruction of a division of kingdoms are mythrather than historysup1⁸ We cannot go into a detailed analysis here but there areample reasons to consider the biblical reconstruction in 1Kgs 11ndash 14 as inventedtradition the double justification of the division in 1Kgs 11ndash 12 the forced laborof Solomon the election scene in Shechem the establishment of Bethel and Danas state sanctuaries the resemblance between Jeroboam I (the dynastic founder)and Jeroboam II and the Judean bias evident in the name-play of the ldquoPeoplersquosContenderrdquo [Jeroboam radic ביר ] and the ldquoPeoplersquos Expanderrdquo [Rehoboam radic בחר ]sup1⁹

See Frevel Geschichte Israels 103ndash48 See Frevel Geschichte Israels 148ndash65 id ldquoDisrupted or conjoined A new proposal regard-ing the division of kingdoms in the history of Israelrdquo (delivered at IOSOT Stellenbosch 2016 to bepublished 2018) id ldquoBen Hadad I and his alleged campaign to the North in 1 Kings 1517ndash20rdquo(delivered at SBL Boston 2017 to be published 2018) I am grateful to Jonathan Robker for this translation of my German pun ldquoVolksweiter undVolksstreiterrdquo


etc Many arguments point in the direction that 1Kgs 1126ndash 1430 is a literary ac-count with only a few historic details if there are any at allWith regard to a his-torical reconstruction of events the first revolt by the people of Israel is neitherdirected against a Jerusalemite prerogative nor is the origin of Israel as an inde-pendent monarchy related to a coup drsquoeacutetat In contrast to 1Kgs 1126 Jeroboam Idid not raise his hand against Solomon ( ךלמבדיםריו ) because of the corveacutee inJerusalem and he did not tear apart the northern tribes from the south By in-venting an upheaval that initiated the Northern Kingdom it became sinful fromthe moment of its foundation even if Solomon is blamed (later) for his misdo-ings (particularly for his mixed marriages and religious deviance) In sum tobuild a history of the northern state based on the account in 1Kgs 11ndash 14 is ldquoskat-ing on thin icerdquo From the historical side we cannot say anything safe about Jer-oboam I if he existed at all

32 Baasha

Although presenting some details the information about Baasharsquos reign is notvery consistent It is noted in formulaic manner that there was war betweenAsa and Baasha throughout his reign (1Kgs 1516 and the repetition of the phrasein 1Kgs 1532) and that he built Ramah to hinder Asa going north Asa himselfshould have bribed the Arameans to push back Baasha When Baasha wasthreatened by the Arameans he withdrew from Ramah and built Tirzah ( לדחיו

הצרתבבשיוהמרה־תאתונבמ 1Kgs 1521) Subsequently Asa built Geba with thestones of Ramah (1Kgs 1522) Although several places named Ramah are men-tioned in the OT (Josh 1326 198 29 36 etc) only the Ramah in Benjamin(Josh 1825 Neh 1133) er-Rām (today al-Ram coord OIG 17211402)sup2⁰ aboutfive miles north of Jerusalem can be taken into account for identification Ac-cordingly the previously-mentioned Geba can be identified with Ǧeba (coordOIG 17491405) whereas Tirzah is Tell el-Fār‛ah in the North (coord OIG18231882) The archaeological record cannot decide issues but it is strikingthat neither Ramah nor Geba nor Tirzah show traces of building activitieswhich can be attributed to Asa or Baasha All these places show evidence oflater building activities mostly in the Iron IIB if anything

Localizations are given following the map reference points of the so-called Palestine Grid1923 (= OIG ldquoOld Israel Gridrdquo) Add 500 to the latitude and 5000 to the longitude to receivethe Israeli Transverse Mercator coordinates 1994 (= NIG ldquoNew Israel Gridrdquo)


That the portrayal of Baasharsquos reign is drawn from literary sources ratherthan from historical records is further corroborated by the other information in1Kgs 15 The text in 1Kgs 15 presents Baasha as an Aramean proteacutegeacute or atleast as under Aramean influence (1Kgs 1519) but neither his nor Asarsquos affilia-tion with Ben-Hadad (who is actually not found in the extra-biblical record atall) has left traces outside of the Bible To make a long story short many reasonssuggest that this very Ben-Hadad and his influence on Israel is invented as is theeponym of Aram by biblical scribessup2sup1

Because the Aramean king Ben-Hadad defeated Israel following a bribesent by Asa the pressure on Judah should have stopped 1Kgs 1520 mentionsthe Aramean conquest of IjonTell ed-Dibbin (coord OIG 20523054) DanTellel-Qāḍī (coord OIG 21122948) Abel-bet-maachaTell Ābil el-Qamḥ (coord OIG20452962) the whole sea region of Kinneret and the entire land of NaphtaliWith many others I have argued elsewhere that this does not reflect the situationin the early ninth century but rather in the second half of the ninth centuryunder the Aramean Hazael or even ndash since 1Kgs 1520 is drawn from 2Kgs1529 ndash in the eighth century under Tiglath-pileser IIIsup2sup2 This is supported bythe archaeological record which cannot be unfolded here

Coming to Baasharsquos coup drsquoetat we have to acknowledge the combination ofstandardized wording and supposed detailed information Baasha started a rev-olution against Jeroboamrsquos son Nadab ( אשעבוילערשקיו ) and killed him at Gibbe-thon ( ןותבגבאשעבוהכיו 1Kgs 1527) After becoming king he struck down all theoffspring of the house of Jeroboam ( םעבריתיב־לכ־תאהכה 1Kgs 1529) Further in-formation is given on Baasharsquos ancestryWhile his fatherrsquos name היחא־ןב is incon-spicuous (1Kgs 2122 2Kgs 99) the Hebrew רכששיתיבל (1Kgs 1527) is odd itpoints to a place named Beth-Issachar or a family named Issachar ratherthan to the region of the tribe in the north Strikingly except for Ezra 236Neh 739 the construction PN+ תיבל +PN is not used elsewhere This may be thereason why the Vaticanus has ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον Βελααν instead of רכששיתיבל TheAntiochene text in contrast gives evidence for the variant ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον Βεδ-δαμα τοῦ Ἰσσαχαρ Whether this has to be taken as the oldest variant does nothave to be decided here Be that as it may the additional information preventsthe reader from identifying Baasharsquos father with the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite(1Kgs 1129ndash30 1215 142 4) There has been much discussion on the specifica-

See the lengthy arguments in Frevel ldquoBen Hadad Irdquo See Frevel Geschichte Israels 195 id ldquoBen Hadad Irdquo Angelika Berlejung ldquoNachbarn Ver-wandte Feinde und Gefaumlhrten die lsquoAramaumlerrsquo im Alten Testamentrdquo in The Arameans Chaldeansand Arabs in Babylonia and Palestine in the First Millennium BC ed Angelika Berlejung andMichael P Streck (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2013) 72ndash73


tion that Baasha slayed Nadab in Gibbethon while the king of Israel besieged thecity which is said to be ldquoPhilistinerdquo ( םיתשלפלרשא ) This expression is attestedonly once more in 1Kgs 1615 suggesting that the siege of Nadab was not success-ful at all The narrative gives the impression that Baasha was part of Nadabrsquosarmy and that he usurped the throne After gaining power as happens laterwith Jehu (2Kgs 1011) and particularly Zimri (1Kgs 1612) he killed all membersof the house of Nadab (1Kgs 1527) Gibbethon the Assyrian Gabbutunu is locat-ed in the vicinity of Gezer either identified with Tell el-MelatTell Mālāt (coordOIG 13741405) or less probably Ras Abū Ḥamīd (coord OIG 13981456)sup2sup3 Striking-ly a siege of Gibbethon is mentioned on the eve of Omrirsquos coup in 1Kgs 1615Omri and the people of Israel besieged Gibbethon while Zimri slayed Elah theson of BaashaWhen Omri heard about this he broke off the siege of Gibbethonand besieged Tirzah instead (1Kgs 1617) The two notes on Gibbethon are part ofa Deuteronomistic retribution-scheme and are obviously related to each otherAt least one if not both of the notes was created for the purpose of correspond-ence While it is not in principle impossible that in the face of changing Phil-istine power (including the decline of Ekron as the leading Philistine city)there were military struggles between ldquothe Philistinesrdquoand Nadab in Gibbethonsup2⁴(which was perhaps controlling the trade routes to the coast) it is not very likely1Kgs 1527 mentions that Nadab laid siege to Gibbethon with the whole of Israel( ןותבג־לעםירצלארשי־לכו ) The motif resembles the pointed participation of thepeople in Omrirsquos revolt where it makes perfect sense in legitimizing Omri In1Kgs 1527 it is a borrowed motif

The information on Baasharsquos illegitimate accession to the throne is nowcrisscrossed by the concluding comment about Baasha in 1Kgs 1533 which isplaced after the doublet of the war-note in v 32 Whether Baasha conspired tooverthrow Nadab (1Kgs 1527ndash28) in Gibbethon or whether he accessed thethrone more or less legitimately in 1Kgs 1533 is open for discussion (and a fas-cinating topic) which cannot be unfolded here But the composition as a whole

The localization follows Stefan Timm ldquoDie territoriale Ausdehnung des Staates Israel zurZeit der Omridenrdquo ZDPV 96 (1980) 35 Ed Noort Die Seevoumllker in Palaumlstina (Kampen KokPharos 1994) 41 For Ras Abū ḤamīdHumeid see Steven M Ortitz ldquoGibbethonrdquo in EerdmansDictionary of the Bible ed David Noel Freedman (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 2000) 500ndash501Volkmar Fritz ldquoDas erste Buch der Koumlnigerdquo in Zuumlrcher Bibelkommentar Altes Testament 101(Zuumlrich TVZ 1996) 155 Manfred Goumlrg ldquoGibbetonrdquo in Neues Bibellexikon 1 ed Manfred Goumlrgand Bernhard Lang (Duumlsseldorf Patmos Verlag 2001) 859 John L Peterson ldquoGibbethon(Place name)rdquo in Anchor Bible Dictionary ed David Noel Freedman (New York Doubleday1992) 1006ndash1007 Carl S Ehrlich Philistines in Transition a History from ca 1000ndash730 BCE (Leiden Brill1996) 66ndash68


casts doubt on Baasharsquos coup drsquoeacutetat I support Šandarsquos astute view that thewhole chapter of 1Kgs 15 is more formulaic than it is historic ldquoDas ganze Kapitelist eine Verquickung von Formeln des R deuteronomistischen Phrasen und anwenigen Stellen auch von Worten der alten Quellen Es ist ein Werk des Rrdquosup2⁵In sum the revolt of Baasha ndash at least in its portrayal in 1Kgs 15 ndash is drawnfrom other biblical sources

33 Zimri-Tibni-Omri

We will also not engage in speculation about the Omri-Tibni-Zimri entanglementhere although the alliteration of names is as suspicious as the rival kingdom ofTibni (1Kgs 1621) is enigmatic All names appear to be hypocoristic forms ofYahwistic names While Zimri (ldquoMy praise is Yahrdquo) and Omri (ldquoMy life is Yahrdquo)are positive nominal-sentence-names Tibni can be read in parallel to Omrias a mocking name denoting either ldquoscarecrowrdquo (from ןבת ldquostraw chaffrdquowith al-lusion to רמע ldquobind sheaves clamp of earsrdquo) or ldquocopy piecerdquo (from הנב or תינבתldquoto buildrdquo ldquolikeness copyrdquo)sup2⁶ The legitimation of the military officer Omri bythe people as an opponent to Zimri who staged a revolt against the alcoholicElah makes Omri on the one hand a hero On the other hand Omrirsquos takeoverseems plausiblesup2⁷ if Zimrirsquos act was judged a villainous regicide by the people1Kgs 169 classifies Zimrirsquos act as a coup by using the phrase וילערשקיו Alreadythis note introduces the opposition between Zimri and Omri since both are armyofficersWhile Zimri is a commander of half the kingrsquos chariots (1Kgs 169) Omriis a commander of the army (1Kgs 1616) The subtle ironic difference makessense because Omri overpowers Zimri King Elah the son of Baasha is de-nounced as unable to lead Israel because he drinks alcohol excessively in Tirzah( רוכשהתשהצרתבאוהו 1Kgs 169) in the house of Arzah the senior official of thepalace This ironic description proves him incompetent to govern not only in themoment but during the entire two years of his reign Zimri then kills all themembers of the royal family and of the reigning party in Tirzah (1Kgs 1611)

Albert Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Muumlnster Aschendorf 1911) 395 See Martin Noth Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Na-mengebung (Hildesheim Olms 1966) 232 Dubovskyacute Northern Kingdom 323 sees ldquoseveral reasons to conclude that the ancient scribesdid not classify it as a coup drsquoeacutetatrdquo which makes the evaluation difficult from a historical stand-point The parallel to the Jehu coup is obvious Both have the same angle of evaluation so that Itend to go with the first part of Dubovskyacutersquos quote that ldquoOmrirsquos ascension to the throne bears sev-eral signs of a coup drsquoeacutetatrdquo (323)


This is emphasized with the formulaic ריקבתשמ ldquoevery malerdquo (lit ldquoanyone whois pissing at the wallrdquo) which is used in the context of regicide (1Sam 2522 341Kgs 1410 2121 2Kgs 98) The extermination is emphasized with the phraseldquoany kinsmen and any friendrdquo ( והערווילאגו ) which is unique in this context How-ever to attribute the end of the house of Baasha to Zimri a monarch of onlyseven days is to relieve Omri from regicide and such a notion would most likelyhave originated in annals from the North Omri battles in Gibbethon against thePhilistines (see above) and is thus presented as ldquodefenderrdquo of Israel Even theDeuteronomistic fulfillment of the prophecy of the prophet Jehu (1Kgs 161ndash412ndash 13) makes the Zimri episode suspicious His reign of seven days as well ashis suicide in Tirzah is construed

The rival kingdom of Tibni has no reason to exist and sounds strange It de-liberately gets no regnal evaluation formula and yet it might still have been his-torical However the reference to Tibni emphasizes the basso continuo of thechaos disorientation and ungovernability of the North

34 Jehu

While there was no doubt about the account of Jehursquos act of regicide whichlaunched the Nimshide dynasty (2Kgs 9ndash 10) the discovery of an extra-biblicalorthostat with an Aramaic inscription from Tel Dan in 1993 changed the situationcompletelysup2⁸ In the most probable reconstruction the author of the inscription(most likely the Aramean king Hazael) claims to have murdered both the Israel-ite king ldquoJehoramrdquoand the King of the house of David ldquoAhaziahurdquo In contrast toHazaelrsquos claim the Bible ascribes the murder of these two kings (supposedlyboth Omridessup2⁹ waging war together in Ramoth-Gilead against the Arameans)to Jehu who usurped the throne of Joram and established his own dynasty(henceforth the Jehuite Dynasty) in the kingdom of Israel Following 2Kgs924ndash27 Jehu is the one who eliminated the last Omrides in Samaria and in Jer-

Shuichi Hasegawa ldquoThe Historiographical Background for Jehursquos Claim as the Murderer ofJoram and Ahaziahrdquo AJBI 37 (2011) 5ndash 17 Frevel Geschichte Israels 110 The inscription waspublished by Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh ldquoAn Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel DanrdquoIEJ 43 (1993) 81‒98 id ldquoThe Tel Dan Inscription a New Fragmentrdquo IEJ 45 (2015) 1‒18 Themost recent discussion of the find context is Merja Alanne Tel Dan An Archaeological and Bib-lical Study of the City of Dan from the Iron Age II to the Hellenistic Period (PhD thesis University ofHelsinki 2017) For this assumption see Frevel Geschichte Israels 159


usalemsup3⁰ Many attempts have been made to reconcile the Aramaic inscriptionwith the Bible However they mostly evince a harmonizing tendency or the effortto maintain the Biblersquos truthsup3sup1

Who was then the ldquorealrdquomurderer of Joram and Ahaziah There is an on-going discussion about whether the Aramean king Hazael is the mastermind be-hind the coup drsquoeacutetat and whether he installed Jehu as Aramean vassal king inSamaria (and Joash in Jerusalem) after the victory over Israel and the killingof these kingssup3sup2 The issue becomes complicated if one compares the Assyriansources that mention the tribute of Jehu the man of Bit-Ḫumri being paid toShalmaneser III in his eighth regal year 841 BCEsup3sup3 This would seem to excludethe possibility that he was an Aramean vassal On the one hand this may dem-onstrate that the Assyrians saw in Jehu a continuation of the Omride dynasty Onthe other hand the tribute shows clearly that Jehu was not an Aramean puppetat that timeWe do not know much about the first years of Jehursquos reign and howhe behaved in foreign affairs after he gained power It is still possible that Jehuwas installed as an Aramean agent or vassal by Hazael (who killed Joram byhimself or with his army) or that the Jehu coup was integrated immediately inthe Aramean foreign policy strategy which failed under pressure from Shalma-neser III However this remains mere speculation Following the general tenden-cy of denouncing the North in the biblical record and considering the characterof the story in 2Kgs 9ndash 10 stylizing this as an intra-Israelite development is per-haps too easy Following Edward Lipiński 2Kgs 828 may also give a clue for Ha-zael as the real wrong-doersup3⁴ Although the Tel Dan inscription cannot decide is-sues it casts doubt on the portrayal of a Nimshide coup drsquoeacutetat as a militaryputsch which is parallel to the other revolts described in the Book of Kings

For the killing of Athaliah as part of the Jehu coup see Frevel Geschichte Israels 159ndash62 See Hasegawa ldquoBackgroundrdquo 9 See positively eg William M Schniedewind ldquoTel Dan Stela New Light on Aramaic andJehursquos Revoltrdquo BASOR 302 (1996) 85 in contrast Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Story of Jehursquos Rebel-lion Hazaelrsquos Inscription and the Biblical Narrativerdquo IEJ 56 (2006) 162ndash63 id ldquoThree Notesof the Aramaic Inscription from Tel Danrdquo IEJ 50 (2000) 102ndash 103 For discussion see Frevel Ge-schichte Israels 216 Jonathan Miles Robker The Jehu Revolution A Royal Tradition of the North-ern Kingdom and Its Ramifications (Berlin De Gruyter 2012) 219ndash24 In addition to the Black Obelisk (2113F) see also the Annals Calah Bulls (2113C) MarbleSlab (2113D) Kurbarsquoil Statue (2113E) cf Hallo and Younger The Context of Scripture vol 2267ndash70 For tribute in general see Juumlrgen Baumlr Der assyrische Tribut und seine DarstellungEine Untersuchung zur imperialen Ideologie im neuassyrischen Reich (Neukirchen-Vluyn Neu-kirchener Verlag 1996) Edward Lipiński The Aramaeans Their Ancient History Culture Religion (Leuven Peeters2000) 379ndash80


Jehursquos accession definitely remains illegitimate but it may not be evaluated as asign of intrinsic instability in the Northern Kingdom

35 Shallum

With Shallumrsquos coup drsquoetat in 2Kgs 1510 we enter the ldquolast days of the kings ofIsraelrdquoThis revolt against Zechariah the last member of the Jehuite dynasty andthe son of Jeroboam II who reigned for only six months (2Kgs 158) is also dif-ficult to evaluate from a historiographic perspective On the one hand it is plau-sible that the royal succession after the successful reign of Jeroboam II may havebeen accompanied by turmoil and crisis One would expect nothing else in tur-bulent times and under the shadow of growing pressure from the Assyrians likeTiglath-pileser III who ascended the throne in 745 BCE Hence the short reigns ofShallum and Menahem are reasonable in general On the other hand some is-sues of chronology and geography within these accounts cast doubt on the integ-rity of the Deuteronomistic report In 2Kgs 1510 we find the same phraseology asin the revolts before ויתחתךלמיווהתימיוםע־לבקוהכיושבי־ןבםלשוילערשקיו ldquoShal-lum the son of Jabesh conspired against him and struck him down at Ibleamand killed him and reigned in his steadrdquo The peculiarities start with thename or origin of the king Although the name is followed by a patronym( ־ןב ) the name of his father can also be read as an indication of provenanceAll other attestations of שבי Ιαβις are related to the city in Transjordan albeitusually followed by דעלג Miller and Hayes suggest a metathesis and take theEphraimite town Jasib (Yāsūf coord OIG 17261865) as the hometown of Shal-lumsup3⁵ (although none of the ancient versions attest such a metathesis) Thecity of Jabesh in Transjordan can be identified with either Tell Abū Charaz (coordOIG 20612007) or Tell el-Maqlūb (coord OIG 21442011)sup3⁶ Taking into accountthe biblical characterization (Judg 219ndash 14 1Sam 111ndash 10 3111) it is a specialplace from which separatist ambitions in critical situations are quite probableReplacing the fatherrsquos name with the city Jabesh would then parallel in a waythe revolt of Shallum with the coup of Pekah who is said to be accompanied byldquofifty men of the Gileaditesrdquo (2Kgs 1525) That there was turmoil in the important

James Maxwell Miller and John H Hayes A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (LouisvilleWestminster John Knox Press 2006 2nd edition) 376 For discussion see Erasmus Gass ldquoJabeschrdquo in Das Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Inter-net (wwwwibilexde) 2010 (httpswwwbibelwissenschaftdestichwort21995 last access 01122017) and on Tell el-Maqlūb Volkmar Fritz ldquoDas zweite Buch der Koumlnigerdquo in Zuumlrcher Bibel-kommentar Altes Testament 102 (Zuumlrich TVZ 1998) 84ndash85


transregional zone of Gilead under Aramean control since the days of Jehu (2Kgs1032) and most probably under pressure as transition zone in the eighth centuryBCE (cf 2Kgs 1529) is quite imaginable However these textual and historicalspeculations cannot be based on further details

Following the Masoretic Text Shallum batters Zechariah םע־לבק which is pe-culiar and transliterated in the Septuagint as καὶ Κεβλααμ This text treats Ke-blaam as a companion Keblaam is described in the Syrian text as lsquohis fatherrsquoconspiring with Shallumsup3⁷ The odd phrase םע־לבק is often translated ldquobeforethe peoplerdquo thus signifying the revolt and murder as a public affair Howeverthe phrase םע־לבק would have been used only here in this way and one has tostick to a late Aramaic adverb לבק ldquobeforerdquo to make sense of it Instead the An-tiochene text reads ἐν rsquoΙεβλαάμ (ldquoin Ibleamrdquo)sup3⁸ and is probably older than the MTThus the emendation of the text in Ibleam is one option that removes one oddityand uncovers another one The site Ibleam is located in the direct neighborhoodof JeninEn Ganin (Ḫirbet Bel‛ame coord OIG 17772058sup3⁹) between Dothan andJezreel What makes this solution easy to dismiss is the fact that Ibleam at theascent of Gur ( םעלבי־תארשארוג־הלעמב 2Kgs 927) is the place where Jehu issaid to have slain Ahaziah⁴⁰ From a literary perspective the Nimshide reign isframed by murder and ldquorevengerdquo in Ibleam which absolutely makes sense inthe composition of Kings (see 2Kgs 1512 ldquoThis was the promise of the LORDthat he gave to Jehu lsquoYour sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth gen-erationrsquo And so it happenedrdquo) Again the composition suggests that these reg-icides are not only understood as ldquohistoricalrdquo facts but also as a structural de-vice

36 Menahem

According to the biblical chronology Menahem usurped the throne after Shallumhad reigned for only one month In contrast to Shallum who was from Transjor-dan Menahemrsquos origin is attributed to Tirzah the former residence of the kingsof Israel which has to be located in Tell el-Fār‛ah (North) (coord OIG 18231882)

This is all the more evident when the order is reversed and the verbs are in plural see the listof manuscripts in Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 327 This seems more or less due to the mis-reading of ιεβλααμ Marcos and Saiz Texto Antioqueno 126 See Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige 84 For the itinerary see Shuichi Hasegawa Aram and Israel during the Jehuite Dynasty (BerlinDe Gruyter 2012) 32ndash33 148ndash49


Tirzah is the place where Omri started his revolution with a siege (1Kgs 1617)⁴sup1and Baasha Elah and Zimri resided (1Kgs 1521 33 166 8 15 23)⁴sup2 The onlyattestation we have to Menahems coup is the biblical text The phrasing ofthis passage is slightly different compared to similar accounts ידג־ןבםחנמלעיו

ויתחתךלמיווהתימיוןורמשבשיבי־ןבםולש־תאךיוןורמשאביוהצרתמ Menahem theson of Gadi came up from Tirzah and came to Samaria and he struck down Shal-lum the son of Jabesh in Samaria and slew him and reigned in his steadrdquo (2Kgs1514) Besides the absence of the catch-phrase וילערשקיו the order of notes isstriking Verse 15 presents the evaluation formula of Shallum referring back tohis conspiracy in a formulaic expression which is almost identical to 1Kgs1620 and the conspiracy of Zimri Verse 16 then inserts an זא sentence with re-gard to Menahem before the introductory synchronism of his reign This impor-tant ldquoinformationrdquo introduces Menahem with incredible brutality without spe-cifying when ldquoat that timerdquo was It may have been before during or after hisrevolution

Whether Menahem was part of the royal family of the Nimshides or a mem-ber of the old Manassite elite in Tirzah (cf Gaddi as representative of the Man-assite tribe in Num 1311) or perhaps even coming from Transjordan (ldquothe Ga-diterdquo) is open for discussion⁴sup3 If the latter is the case and ידג־ןב has to beinterpreted as a clan name (cf 2Sam 2336) or indicates the region (1Sam 137

דגץרא 245)⁴⁴ the origin of Menahem becomes parallel to the origin of Shallumfrom Jabesh (see above) This descent from Gilead is perhaps deliberately relatedIf so it is also most relevant that his son was killed by 50 men from Gilead (2Kgs1525) Gilead in northern Transjordan is presented as a region in turmoil (per-haps following its eventful history as part of the northern state in the ninthand eighth century BCE) It may reflect a pro-Assyrian position arguing that

Note that this also fits the above-mentioned framing idea of Ibleam for the Nimshides and issupported further by the parallel of 1Kgs 1620 with 2Kgs 1515 One gets the impression that in-cidents and locations are put nicely together to emphasize divine providence For the ldquoTirzah polityrdquo as a first cluster of power see Frevel Geschichte Israels 154 for amore biblically based portrait of Tirzah see Israel Finkelstein The Forgotten Kingdom the Ar-chaeology and History of Northern Israel (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2013) 66For the archaeological record see also the overview of id ldquoTell El-Far‛ah (Tirzah) and theearly days of the Northern Kingdomrdquo RB 119 (2012) 331ndash46 focusing on Iron I and IIB whilenot discussing the Iron IIBC stratum VIIe Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings a New Translation with Introduction and Com-mentary (New Haven CT Yale University Press 1988) 171 This is quite possible even if the conception of twelve tribes with Gad in Transjordan is most-ly post-exilic


only in subservience to Assur can a political connection between ldquothe Gileadrdquoand Israel be perpetuated

If ידג־ןב is not meant to link Shallum and Menahem or does not reflect Trans-jordanian political background realities Gad is the fatherrsquos name⁴⁵ and Mena-hem probably has a connection to Tirzah One may speculate that Menahem isa partisan of the former Samarian elite who retired to the old regnal quarterin Tirzah when Shallum defeated the Nimshides and killed members of theroyal house It makes a lot of sense that the Samarian elite was superseded bythe Shallum party and may thus have fled to the old regnal quarter in Tirzahabout 85 miles east of Samaria to organize a counter-revolution

Dubovskyacute points to the palace building 148 in Stratum VIId and to three pat-rician houses (no 327 328 710) as possible evidence ldquothat just before the col-lapse of Samaria the city of Tirzah reappeared as a new rival on the Israelite po-litical scenerdquo⁴⁶ He argues that Tirzah was destroyed by fire during the reign ofOmri and that this forced him to move the capital to Samaria Tirzah then ldquodis-appears hellip from the biblical account only to reappear again in the account ofMenahemrsquos usurpationrdquo⁴⁷ In attributing Stratum VIId to the last days of the king-dom of Israel Dubovskyacute follows Alain Chambon Since the significant prosperityof Stratum VIIb already postdates the move of the capital to Samaria by theOmrides in the ninth century this prosperous phase may have been ended byHazael⁴⁸ After a short abandonment Tirzah was rebuilt in Stratum VIIc whichhas to be taken together more or less with Stratum VIId Stratum VIId then ldquocon-sists of a large palatial complex in the north medium-size domestic units in thecenter and smaller houses in the south This architectural sequence seems torepresent a three-tier hierarchy of citizens a ruling class wealthy familiesand poorer familiesrdquo⁴⁹ The pottery of Stratum VIIc and VIId ldquorepresents an

For the element Gad in personal names see Nahman Avigad and Banjamin Sass Corpus ofWest-Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1997) 491 Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 332 Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reign before the Assyrian Invasion (2 Kings 1514ndash16)rdquo in Lit-erature as Politics Politics as Literature Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machi-nist ed David S Vanderhooft and Abraham Winitzer (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2013) 36 See Finkelstein ldquoTell El-Far‛ahrdquo334 The attribution of the destruction level to Omri has pro-duced various theories of rivalry between Samaria and Tirzah See eg Bob Becking ldquoMena-chemrsquos Massacre of Tiphsat At the Crossroads of Grammar and Memory (2 Kings 1516)rdquo in His-tory Memory Hebrew Scriptures A Festschrift for Ehud Ben Zvi ed Ian D Wilson and Diana VEdelman (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2015) 20 Ze‛ev Herzog and Lily Singer-Avitz ldquoSub-Dividing the Iron Age IIA in Northern Israel A Sug-gested Solution to the Chronological Debaterdquo TA 332 (2006) 163ndash95 175


8th-century assemblagerdquo⁵⁰ parallel to Megiddo IVA which dates to the end of theeighth century⁵sup1 Israel Finkelstein has recently put Tell el-Fār‛ah Stratum VIId inthe very short period between 74030ndash20⁵sup2 The eighth century heyday is parallelto other cities in the North However to attribute these structures to Menahemrsquosagency and to imagine ldquotensions between Samaria and Tirzah since Tirzah be-came a military base for a new revoltrdquo⁵sup3 is elaborate and remains mostly theoret-ical

A further detail is noted in 2Kgs 1516 ldquoAt that time Menahem sacked Tiph-sah all who were in it and its territory from Tirzah on because they did not openit to him he sacked it He ripped open all the pregnant women in itrdquo There aregrammatical and exegetical problems with this verse which have already beendiscussed at length by Bob Becking and Peter Dubovskyacute Let me briefly expoundon four issues

a) The preposition ןמ

One of the many problems of 2Kgs 1516 is the understanding of the ןמ in הצרתמ which is usually translated to mean that Tirzah was the base from which Mena-hem sacked Tappuah or Tiphsah (ldquofrom Tirzah onrdquo) If the הצרתמ which imme-diately follows the description of the first הכנ -action and its three תא -objects ismeant locally ldquofrom Tirzahrdquo then one would expect a subsequent דע (ldquofrom Tir-zah to helliprdquo) As an alternative to this understanding Dubovskyacute suggested either toread the הצרתמ as a declaration of Menahemrsquos origin (thus doubling the הצרתמ inv 14) or as ldquofrom Tirzahrdquomeaning that Menahem ldquoattacked hellip (the one who was)from Tirzahrdquo⁵⁴ While admitting ldquoinsurmountable syntactical difficultiesrdquo⁵⁵ withthe latter proposal it can be ruled out For the first interpretation there is noneed to mention the Menahemrsquos origin again Bob Becking added two furtherreadings of ןמ namely a causal ldquobecause of Tirzahrdquo and a comparative ldquomorethan Tirzahrdquo⁵⁶ Both remain problematic because they presume a context that

Herzog and Singer-Avitz ldquoSub-Dividingrdquo 176 Lily Singer-Avitz ldquoThe Pottery of Megiddo Strata IIIndash II and a Proposed Subdivision of theIron IIC Period in Northern Israelrdquo BASOR 372 (2014) 123 134 Finkelstein Forgotten Kingdom 69 Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrdquo 38 For the rivalry between Samaria and Tirzah see already fn 49and below Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrdquo 32 Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrdquo 33 Becking ldquoMenachemrdquo 20


is not mentioned in the text They shall elliptically refer back to what had beendone to Tirzah that is Omrirsquos siege on the city and the suicide of Zimri (1Kgs1618) For Becking this is a counterstrike against the memory of a defeatedgroup in the Northern Kingdom However the brutality of this event and itsplace in the collective memory as rivalry between Tirzah and Samaria remainsonly a guess (see below) 2Kgs 1516 is not a ldquorevenge for Omrirsquos deeds and do-ingsrdquo⁵⁷ In sum I agree with Dubovskyacute that the only possible reading is the loca-tional one that Menahem is going out from Tirzah Thus it becomes all the moreimportant to understand the relation of Tirzah and Tiphsah (see c)

b) Menahem the ripper

The atrocious act of ripping up pregnant women aims at razing out a populationsince women in childbirth and offspring are killed alike It is attested in biblicalpassages (2Kgs 812 Hos 141 Amos 113 cf Isa 1316 18 Hos 1014) and rarely inextra-biblical sources⁵⁸ This is expressed by the use of the double verbs הכנ and

עקב (which are combined only in this verse) In biblical texts this cruel war crimeoccurs rarely Amos 113 accuses Ammon of having ripped up pregnant women inGilead to enlarge their territory ( םלובג־תאביחרה ) If Tiphsah could be attributed toTransjordan Menahem (the Gadite) could have been taking revenge for thisAmmonite cruelty But the location is almost excluded (see below c) The othertwo instances of ripping pregnant women in the Bible relate to the ArameansIn 2Kgs 812 Elisha weeps and prophesies that Hazael will dash little onesand rip the pregnant women of Israel This corresponds to Hos 141 If we takeTiphsah at face value and locate it in Syria then it may be the north-easternedge of the Aramean empire which is addressed here Menahem then maytake revenge for the Aramean cruelty committed by Hazael (2Kgs 812) Butthis implicit connection is also very elaborate

In v 15 the double הכנ is strikingWhile the first clearly has Menahem as thesubject the second in the יכ -sentence remains grammatically obscure It has noobject and no clear subject The subject could be Menahem but also the same

Becking ldquoMenachemrdquo 20 See Mordechai Cogan ldquolsquoRipping Open Pregnant Womenrsquo in the Light of an Assyrian Ana-loguerdquo Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 103 (1983) 755ndash56 Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoRippingOpen Pregnant Arab Women Reliefs in Room L of Ashurbanipalrsquos North PalacerdquoOr 78 (2009)394ndash419


subject as in חתפאליכ ⁵⁹ Strikingly most translations change the subject with thenarrative ךיו But if this is not the case the subject of עקב ldquohe rippedrdquo opens upand does not necessarily have to be Menaham If the subject of חתפ is not the cityas it is usually assumed to be but should be read as ldquohe did not openrdquo (a mas-culine singular referring to a person) Hazael comes to mind particularly on theliterary level (2Kgs 812) Although it is the last and only other passage in theBook of Kings which uses also the verb עקב with הרה this might be too far-fetch-ed If the atrocious act by Menahem is not considered to be revenge the solutionmay perhaps be found in the obscurity of ldquoTiphsahrdquo

c) Tiphsah

Tiphsah is mentioned only once more in 1Kgs 54 (Engl 1Kgs 424) as the north-ern frontier of the Solomonic empire It is usually identified with a city TapsakeΘαψακος or Θαψα latin Thapsa[cus] close to Carchemish at the river Euphratesan important caravanserai identified either with Qal‛at el-Dibse or Qal‛at Naǧm⁶⁰ldquoTifsach war eine wichtige Karawanenstation am Eufrat die in pers Zeit wohlauch einen bedeutenden Grenzuumlbergang von der transeufratischen in die zwi-schenstromlaumlndische Satrapie markierterdquo⁶sup1 The siege of a city on the westernshore of the Euphrates-knee seems very unlikely for Menahem In acknowledg-ing the ldquotoo far away locationrdquo the ancient versions read Θερσα Tirzah (LXX20 B A Ldagger) θαιρα (Adagger) or ταφωε (Ldagger) Tappuah⁶sup2 With the emendation of thetext Menahemrsquos crime comes closer to the core territory of the state of Israel Tir-

Although the LXX has a plural ἤνοιξαν the subject is not necessarily the city of Θερσα (orTiphsah) as Bob Becking assumed However the city is the most probable subject even inthe Hebrew text because the suffixes of הילובג (τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ τὰ ὅρια αὐτῆς) and

היתורהה refer to Tiphsah See Wolfgang Roumlllig ldquoThapsacusrdquo in Brillrsquos New Pauly ed Hubert Cancik and HelmuthSchneider (httpdxdoiorg1011631574-9347_bnp_e1206490 last access 21122017) Othmar Keel Max Kuumlchler and Christoph Uehlinger Orte und Landschaften der Bibel vol 1Geographisch-geschichtliche Landeskunde (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1984) 234For an update to the archaeology of Carchemish see Nicolograve Marchetti ldquoThe 2014 joint Turco-Ital-ian Excavations at KarkemishrdquoKazi Sonuccedillari Toplantisi 37 (2016) 363ndash80 and id ldquoThe CulticDistrict of Karkemish in the Lower Townrdquo in LrsquoArcheologia del Sacro e LrsquoArcheologie del CultoSabratha Ebla Ardea Lanuvio ed Paolo Matthiae (Rome Bardi Edizioni 2016) 373ndash414 For the various traditions see Dubovskyacute Menahemrsquos Reign 31ndash32 for the Greek manuscriptssee Alan England Brooke Norman McLean and Henry St John Thackeray ed The Old Testa-ment in Greek According to the Text of Codex Vaticanus Supplemented from Other Uncial Manu-scripts with a Critical Apparatus Containing the Variants of the Chief Ancient Authorities for theText of the Septuagint (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2010)


zah does not make sense because Menahem came originally from Tirzah andwould have destroyed ldquohis hometownrdquo or the city where his action took its out-come (this may be the reason why Rahlfs reads Θαρσιλα) The Antiochene textΤαφώε is the Tappuah that is often favored in commentaries⁶sup3 Tappuah has tobe identified with Tell aš-ŠēḫAbū Zarad located about 20 km south of Tirzah⁶⁴at the border between Ephraim and Manasse (Josh 178) At first glance thismakes more sense if the given rationale חתפאליכ (ldquobecause he did not openrdquo)can be understood as a resistance against a reign of Menahem in the southWhether there was a greater anti-Assyrian sentiment in the southern part ofthe land or supporters of Shallum mounted an opposition against Menahem re-mains very speculative Miller and Hayes suggested that Tappuah is very close toa village named Jashib (Yāsūf coord OIG 17261865) in Ephraim which could bemisread from Jabesh the hometown of Shallum (see above) But why Tappuah ifthe revenge is actually directed against Jashib Maybe there is another possibilityto take Tiphsah metaphorically as will be elaborated in the next paragraph

d) Why this brutality

Does the reference mirror a struggle by the Israelite state for sovereignty in timesof hardship We come back to Bob Beckingrsquos idea that it may be ldquoan act of re-venge for Omrirsquos deeds and doingsrdquo referring ldquoback to the memory of a defeatedgroup within the Northern Kingdom which we rejected aboverdquo⁶⁵ This may pointin the right direction but Zimrirsquos suicide and Omrirsquos cruelty are in my under-standing already too far away in time to form the background to this referenceIt is rather the revolt of Shallum and the end of the Nimshide dynasty that can beread as the background to Menahemrsquos cruelty If Menahem was not a member ofthe Nimshide dynastic family he may nevertheless have been part of the elite

Karl Elliger ldquoStudien aus dem Deutschen Evangelischen Institut fuumlr Altertumswissenschaf-ten in Jerusalem 42 Die Grenze zwischen Ephraim und ManasserdquoZeitschrift des Deutschen Pal-aumlstina-Vereins 53 (1930) 265ndash309 292ndash93 See also Schoors Kingdoms of Israel and Judah 13Juumlrgen Werlitz Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Stuttgart Katholisches Bibelwerk 2002) 265 For the An-tiochene text see Marcos and Saiz Texto Antioqueno 126 For the identification with Tell aš-ŠēḫAbū Zarad (coord OIG 17191679) see Siegfried Mitt-mann ed Tuumlbinger Bibelatlas (Stuttgart Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft 2000) For the identifica-tion with Kirbet Beit Farr (A) (coord OIG 18481831) see Adam Zertal The Eastern Valleys and theFringes of the Desert vol 2 The Manasseh Hill Country Survey (Leiden Brill 2007) 112 443ndash44 Becking ldquoMenachemrdquo 20


That he was already a king by the grace of the Assyrian ruler (see below) isnot very likely if we rely upon the established chronological framework Tiglath-pileser III had not subdued Samaria in neither 743 nor 738 BCE⁶⁶ According tothe biblical chronology Menahemrsquos revolt took place around 748 BCE when theAssyrian presence under Aššur-nerari V was non-existent in the Southern Le-vant Menahem was certainly an Assyrian vassal and paid tribute to Pul onlyby 738 BCE⁶⁷ Pul is the throne name of Tiglath-pileser (assyr Tukulti-apil-Ešarra) after he ascended to the Babylonian throne in 729 BCE Thus naming Ti-glath-pileser III Pul is most probably an anachronism which attests to an edito-rial bias as the text was being produced⁶⁸

However when and how Menahem became king is open for discussion Theldquochronological conundrumrdquo (Kristin Weingart this volume) calls for caution asnot only the dates of Pekahrsquos reign are wrong The common date of 738 BCEfor the tribute as well as the ten-year duration of his reign are by no meansclear⁶⁹ Hayim Tadmor has argued that the tribute in 738 BCE was perhaps notthe only tribute Menahem paid and that the acknowledgment for the durationof his reign mentioned in 2Kgs 1519 ldquowas paid in 740 or even earlierrdquo⁷⁰ If sothe amount mentioned in the biblical text becomes also questionable in its rela-tion to the ldquosecondrdquo tribute in 738 BCE The tribute mentioned in 2Kgs 1519 isextraordinarily high but may not have been exaggerated since 1000 talents ofsilver are also mentioned in the Summary Inscription 4 18prime as the tribute ofHoshea who was installed by the Assyrians⁷sup1 Following Nadav Narsquoaman thevery high amount ldquofits the context of a heavy tribute paid by a newly installed

See Oswald Loretz and Walter Mayer ldquoPūlu ndash Tiglatpileser III und Menahem von Israel nachassyrischen Quellen und 2 Koumln 151920rdquo UF 22 (1990) 226ndash27 The tribute of Miniḫimme of Samerina (mMi-ni-hi-im-˹me˺ KURSa-˹me˺-ri-i-na-a-˹a˺) is listedtwice in the Calah Annals 13 10 and in the Iran-Stele IIIA 5 see Tadmor Inscriptions 66106 For the tribute list of Tiglath-pileser III and the 1000 talents of silver see further Bob Beck-ing The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill 1992) 4 and thediscussion below For other explanations see Hallo and Younger The Context of Scripture vol 2 285 and Loretzand Walter ldquoPūlu ndash Tiglatpileser IIIrdquo 221ndash31 See the discussion in Tadmor Inscriptions 274ndash76With the date 738 BCE I follow WeippertHistorisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament 288 whereas Loretz and Mayer ldquoPūlu ndash TiglatpileserIIIrdquo assume that Menahem paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III already in 743 BCE following thestudy of Edwin R Thiele whereas Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige 86 dates the tribute tothe year 740 BCE See also Kristin Weingartrsquos chapter in this volume Tadmor Inscriptions 276 Cogan and Tadmor II Kings 172 Tadmor Inscriptions 141 for the parallel cases of Hulli ofTabal and Metenna of Tyre see Tadmor Inscriptions 276


king in return for the recognition of the Assyrian kingrdquo⁷sup2 This parallel may sug-gest that Menahemrsquos ascension to the throne was illegitimate and perhaps relat-ed to Assyrian westward-expansion At the very least he bought Assyrian supportfor his rule (see below)

If the figures given in the Bible are correct but relate to an earlier tribute tothe Assyrian king Menahem either needed the help of the Assyrian power to en-force his powercampaign against the anti-Assyrian Shallum partisans or he wasindeed a king by the grace of the Assyrian king The ldquotext indicates that Tiglath-pileser intervened directly and personally to support the pro-Assyrian Menahemand to preserve his hold on the thronerdquo⁷sup3

Given that the relationship between the amount of the tribute paid and thepolitical status of the vassal was commonly known there is another possibilityto explain 2Kgs 1519 the figures for Menahemrsquos tribute are not historically cor-rect but the Deuteronomistic editor aware of this Assyrian practice adds inthis detail to paint Menahem as a wicked usurper

The brutality shown to Tiphsah is given as paradigmatic example of hiswickedness But this elaborate possibility is only theoretical

It is more probable that the figures are historically correct and Menahemwas seen as a usurper by Tiglath-pileser III The biblical chronology is perhapscorrupted and Menahem ascended the throne in Samaria in fact only in 738BCE or his tribute has to be dated earlier to 743ndash740 BCE⁷⁴ as earlier studieswere willing to assume This opens the window to the suggestion that perhapshe directed a rival monarchy from Tirzah in the years before accessing the throneillegitimately in Samaria This would fit the archaeological record of Tell el-Fār‛ah (North) presented above

The exceptional phrase ודיבהכלממהקיזחהלותאוידיתויהל ldquoto that his handmight be with him to strengthen his kingdom in his handrdquoas the ratio of the trib-ute may give another hint for the subjection of Menahem to Tiglath-pileser IIIand the suggestion of a rival kingdom of Menahem The phrase has two partswhich can be read as a doublet or even seen as evidence for a pleonasticstyle But since the LXX has only εἶναι τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ the secondpart ודיבהכלממהקיזחהל can be evaluated as a later gloss⁷⁵ Interestingly enoughthe phrase is attested also with Amaziah who erected a counter-kingdom in

Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaigns against Tyre and Israel (734ndash732 BCE)rdquoTA22 (1995) 275 with reference to Tadmor Inscriptions 276 Miller and Hayes History 377 See the discussion Loretz and Mayer ldquoPūlu ndash Tiglatpileser IIIrdquo 226 See Marvin A Sweeney I amp II Kings A Commentary (Louisville KT Westminster John KnowPress 2007) 373


Lachish and who killed his servants (2Kgs 145) and with Jehoram in the contextof the murder of his brothers (2Chr 214) By this the suspicion is nurtured thatMenahemrsquos accession was lsquospecialrsquo in a way It was irregular indeed and sup-ported by the Assyrians Perhaps it was two-tiered process and the secondstage may also have been dearly bought with a bribe put into the hands of Ti-glath-pileser III

If we push this speculation even further the enigmatic Tiphsah (given itsoriginal reading instead of Antiochene Ταφώε Tappuah) gives a hidden clueto the revenge on Samaria symbolizing the ideological transfer of Samaria in As-syrian realm (ldquobecause he had not openedrdquo the city for the Assyrians) Tiphsah isa border city at the Euphrates and beyond there is clearly Assyrian territory

The ldquopayment and other tributes must have drained the wealth of Israel bro-ken the economic power of Israel and financially ruined the Northern King-domrdquo⁷⁶ Menahem exacted the money from the people by imposing a tax onthe wealthy If the figures of the tribute are calculable and every rich man hadto pay 50 silver shekels as it is said in 2Kgs 1520 Menahem was in need of72000 rich people No matter how one looks at it the given numbers cannotbe sound Dubovskyacute has pointed to Lev 273 The idea of interpreting the figurestheologically perhaps goes in the right direction⁷⁷ Considering that this is abiased description of the North these details may be intended to devalue Mena-hemrsquos kingdom on an economic level Be that as it may the bribe did work andTiglath-pileser III withdrew ( ץראבםשדמע־אלו ) This is only half of the truth sincethe Assyrians were present shortly after this event at least in the 13th or 14th palucirc(see below) If the tribute of Menahem was meant to replace the anti-Assyrianpolicy of Shallum with the help of Tiglath-pileser III the state of Israel was trans-ferred into the second stage of vassalage

To sum up this in-depth historical discussion dealing with the scarcity ofinformation about Menahem has come to some conclusions which admittedlycannot be substantiated in terms of historical accuracy in contrast to ShallumMenahem seems to have taken a pro-Assyrian position Shortly after the anti-As-syrian Shallum destroyed the Nimshides and representatives of the ruling classhad gained power in Samaria he may have erected a rival kingdom in TirzahThis may have formed the background for the biblical chronology which attrib-utes a period of roughly ten years reign to him Perhaps with an act of extraor-

Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 340 Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 340 ליחהירובג־לכלע can also denote the leading elitewhich was allegedly in Samaria Is this an additional hidden hint for the ldquorevengerdquo-theoryagainst the anti-Assyrian party However this is mere theory and cannot be substantiated Wedo not know anything on the foreign policy of Shallum and a possible anti-Assyrian attitude


dinary brutality he expanded his power from Tirzah to Samaria For this verygambit he made use of the help of Tiglath-pileser III The anti-Assyrian partygrew mighty because of the heavy tribute he had to pay and they swept hisachievements away at the end of his reign or shortly after his death 2Kgs1522 says that he died naturally and was buried regularly but the successionto this throne may be more tumultuous as will be discussed below

37 Pekah

The similarity between the names Pekah and Pekahiah which differ only bytheir explicit theophoric elements and their patronyms is suspicious Howeverno other sources support the view that they are the same person As we havelearned already not all usurpers are named with explicit Yahwistic theophoricnames but we can find other indications that Pekahiah was conflated withPekah by the biblical authors Anyway there are some quite interesting detailsin the description of this penultimate regicide Pekah is said in 2Kgs 1525 tobe a captain שילש ndash a high officer of the reigning monarch or kingrsquos deputyTherefore the rebellion was kindled within the inner administration Thismakes a lot of sense considering the controversies surrounding foreign policyThe שילש is a high military οr administrative position (Ex 147 154 2Kgs 9251025) and is in 1Kgs 922 separated from the םידבע םירש המחלמהישנא andthe וישרפוובכרירש 2Kgs 72 17 19 suggests that שילש is the kingrsquos deputy Thenext detail is the location of the regicide like Shallum he is killed in Samariabut notably in the palace The ךלמה־תיבןומרא is part of the kingrsquos palace mostprobably the private rooms It is mentioned only once more in the Zimri con-spiracy in 1Kgs 1618 as the place where the king committed suicide Perhapsthis also points to the close relation between Pekahiah and Pekah On a textuallevel the similarity between the names of the king and his captain emphasizesthe close relationship between them In addition Dubovskyacute argues that this lo-cation is used to inform the reader that ldquoconspiracies intrigues and murders pe-netrated the whole kingdom not even the most protected place of the kingdom― the keep of the royal palace ― was safe enough to protect the king againstconspiratorsrdquo⁷⁸ Additionally the special place links the Pekah revolt to theZimri account In my understanding it is not meant to be especially climacticThe putsch is carried out by Pekah and fifty men of Gilead (2Kgs 1525) and fol-lowing the LXX these are fifty of four hundred (ἀπὸ τῶν τετρακοσίων) in total

Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 328


Whether there is an official relationship between the usurper and these men isnot said they may be his combat-effective unit but then Pekah would be onlyone of many captains (ὁ τριστάτης) It is striking that the region of Gilead re-ceives special emphasis as it does in the revolts of Shallum and Menahem Asargued above Gilead was weak and had experienced frequent changes of sover-eignty between Israel the Arameans and the Assyrians⁷⁹ The region may havefelt the growing pressure of Tiglath-pileser in 735 BCE first and foremost Mostenigmatic is the reference to היראה־תאובגרא־תא which is usually translated asldquoalong with Argob and Ariehrdquo It is possible that these are two individualswho took part in the revolution (so LXX μετὰ τοῦ Αργοβ καὶμετὰ τοῦ Αρια καὶμετ᾽ αὐτοῦ πεντήκοντα ἄνδρες) or they are places where the revolution firstarose Argob is the name of the region of Bashan as noted in 1Kgs 413 andDeut 34 13ndash 14⁸⁰ This is purely speculative but it is striking that Transjordanianpower is employed with the details of his revolution Tiglath-pileser III raided Gi-lead to gain control over the Transjordanian trade route⁸sup1 This may have preced-ed the conquest of Cis-Jordan described at the end of the reign of Pekah in 2Kgs1529 Another possibility is that the anti-Assyrian party toppled the reign in Sa-maria when Menahem died⁸sup2 Be that as it may the annexation of northern ter-ritory is connected to Pekah in the biblical text (2Kgs 1529) The text mentions amilitary campaign of Tiglath-pileser who is named here רסאלפתלגת for the firsttime (cf 2Kgs 167 10 for further references and 2Kgs 1519 for Pul) This campaignis usually meant to be the 12th (ana māt Pilišta) 734 BCE or more probably the13th and 14th palucirc of Tiglath-pileser III (733ndash732 BCE) (ana māt Damašeq)⁸sup3 It

This is also the background of the Aramean conspiracy in the revolt of Pekah (cf 2Kgs 1537)cf Miller and Hayes History 376 I will not discuss the so-called Syro-Ephraimite war in thischapter but see Frevel Geschichte Israels 240 See Johannes Bremer ldquoArgobrdquo in Das Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (wwwwibi-lexde) 2014 (httpswwwbibelwissenschaftdestichwort13757 last access 03122017) See Meinders Dijkstra and Karel Vriezen ldquoThe Assyrian Province of Gilead and the lsquoMyth ofthe Empty Landrsquordquo in Exploring the Narrative Jerusalem and Jordan in the Bronze and Iron AgesPapers in Honour of Margreet Steiner ed Eveline van der Steen Jeanette Boertien and NoorMulder-Hymans (London Bloomsbury 2015) 6ndash7 See Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige 85 For the dating Weippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament 288 map in Cogan andTadmor II Kings 180 Dubovskyacutementions that Transjordan was conquered in the 13th palucircwhichhe draws from Annals 23 and Summary Inscription 9 and 13 and the conquest of Ashtarot de-picted in Nimrud He proposes three phases coast ldquoTransjordan and epicentres (Damascus andIsrael)rdquo (Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaigns in 734ndash732 BCrdquo158) The province of Mag-idducirc was founded 733 BCE the province of Dimašqa in 732 BCE see the chart in Simo ParpolaldquoThe National and Ethnic Identity in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Assyrian Identity in Post-Em-pire Timesrdquo Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 18 (2004) 5ndash22 appendix II


is well known that the ldquohe reigned twenty yearsrdquo in 2Kgs 1527 contradicts thechronology in several ways most crucially the assumption that according tothe vassal-list of Tiglath-pileser III the pre-predecessor Menahem payed tributein ca 738 BCE (see above) Taking this for granted there is no time for Pekah(ass Paqaḫa) to reign twenty years even without Pekahiah in between⁸⁴ Bethat as it may the raid against Israel can best be placed in 734ndash732 BCE withinthe context of the annexation of Gaza and Damascus⁸⁵ If we are forced to decideit would fit our knowledge of the year 733 BCE best⁸⁶

The biblical text mentions the deportation of people and the conquest ofeight areas in the north ndash moving from cities (Ijon Abel-beth-maacah JanoahKedesh Hazor) to landscapes or regions (Gilead Galilee) and from north tosouth In adding the concluding element ילתפנץרא־לכ the list becomes differentNaphtali is not introduced by תאו and not determined by an article The phrase isattested only once more in 1Kgs 1520 to denote the territory taken by Ben-Hadadbut the latter appears to be dependent on 2Kgs 1530 (see above) To bring up ldquoallthe land of Naphtalirdquo after noting the cities in the Huleh valley is strange be-cause Ijon Abel-beth-maacah Kedesh Janoah and Hazor are all in the areawhich is commonly attributed to Naphtali This very fact has nourished specula-tion that either Naphtali or even the three regions of Gilead Galilee and Naph-tali are additions not least because they are not listed in the alleged geograph-ical order⁸⁷ The list starts close to the Litani river in the North with Ijon usuallyidentified with Tell Dibbin (coord OIG 20523054) then Abel-beth-maacah thegeographical ldquogaterdquo to Palestine Tell Ābil el-Qamḥ at the mouth of the Biqa val-ley (coord OIG 20452962) going south to Janoah which is not Yeno‛am 5 kmsouth from the outfall of the Sea of Galilee (coord OIG 19822354) but ratherTell en-NalsquoamehTell an-Na‛imah in the Huleh valley (coord OIG 20582868)The next city Kedesh is usually identified with Tel Qedesh northwest of theHuleh swamp (coord OIG 19972796) and the final city is Hazor identifiedwith Tell el-Qedaḥ (coord OIG 20352693) in the southwestern area of theHuleh basin From this view it is quite convincing to connect Galilee to thesouth but the text mentions Gilead first and Galilee second Scholars have

See Frevel Geschichte Israels 182ndash83 See Narsquoaman ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo 268ndash78 See Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige 88ndash89 See Ernst Wuumlrthwein Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige vol 2 1 Koumln 172ndash2 Koumln 25 (Goumlttingen Vanden-hoeck amp Ruprecht 1984) 384ndash85 Becking The Fall of Samaria 18 Fritz Das zweite Buch derKoumlnige 88


noted that the הלילגה is a more or less late form⁸⁸ Considering the difference be-tween the two object markers and the different phrase ילתפנץראלכ it has beenargued that הלילגה־תאודעלגה־תאו is a later addition Both Gilead and Galilee arequite late additions which are intended to establish a larger territory of the Northas conquered area Perhaps it was influenced by Jdt 155 or the Maccabean revoltin 1Macc 517 20 55 If this is accepted then ילתפנץראלכ becomes the concludingsummary of the cities in the north which then only comprises the Huleh valley⁸⁹The important town of Dan which was definitely destroyed by the Assyrians butlater rebuilt as an administrative center is (deliberately) absent (but cf 1Kgs1520) Despite this detailed discussion most of the cities just mentioned showsigns of significant destruction from Assyrian invaders in the archaeological re-cord Southern cities were also subject to the same destructive forces⁹⁰ Tel Dan(Stratum II) was destroyed violently by Tiglath-pileser III Domestic and publiczones were affected alike Bethsaida (et-Tell Stratum Va) was destroyed by firein intense warfare Chinnereth (Tell el-ʻOreimeh Stratum II) was almost com-pletely destroyed Although clear signs of destruction are undeniable Yifat Thar-eani has recently argued against the view that the Assyrians totally emptied theland ldquoIt seems that the archaeological evidence from Dan rules out the domi-nant theory that by the late eighth century BCE the Assyrians left the regionas an lsquoempty cellrsquordquo⁹sup1 After the Assyrian conquest Dan prospered and this factalso argues against a total decline in the Huleh region Thareani calls this a ldquomid-dle-rangerdquo strategy which aimed at the economic exploitation of the region Wewill not discuss the outcome of the campaign and the repercussions of the As-syrian strategy in the present paperWith Tiglath-pileser IIIrsquos raid Israel enteredthe final stage of vassalage that was accompanied by a significant loss of terri-tory and the deportation of people

The Galil is attested also in Josh 207 2132 1Kgs 634 911 1Chr 661 Esth 16 Cant 514 andIsa 823 Only 2Kgs 1529 reads הלילג See Narsquoaman ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo274 see James A Montgomery A Critical andExegetical Commentary on the Books of Kings (New York Scribner 1951) 452Wuumlrthwein Buumlcherder Koumlnige 383 Cogan and Tadmor II Kings 174 See Yifat Thareani ldquoImperializing the Province A Residence of a Neo-Assyrian City Gover-nor at Tel Danrdquo Levant 48 (2016) 257ndash58 ead ldquoThe Archaeological Character of an ImperialFrontier Assyrian Control Policy in the Hula Valleyrdquo in Archaeology and History of EmpiresModels Projects and Works in Progress in Northern Mesopotamia ed Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault and Olivier Rouault (2013 Paris conference forthcoming) For the campaign see also Du-bovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo 164ndash66 and Dijkstra and Vriezen ldquoThe AssyrianProvince of Gileadrdquo 6ndash 10 Thareani ldquoImperial Frontierrdquo 14


38 Hoshea

Whether Hoshea the last king of Israel (who is not even mentioned by the con-querors of Samaria Shalmaneser V and Sargon II in 72221 BCE)⁹sup2 was a usurperor whether he was installed by Tiglath-pileser III differs between the portrayal in2Kgs 1530 and the Assyrian Summary Inscription 4 (2117C) line 11 (translationfollowing K Lawson Younger in CoS II288) ldquoPekah their king and I installedHoshea [as king] over themrdquo How Pekah was eliminated remains unclear butthe Assyrian sources are distinct about the fact that Hoshea was installed bythe Assyrians⁹sup3 In contrast the biblical account is clear in its classification ofHoshearsquos accession as a revolt It employs the classical formula in 2Kgs 1530abut in an intensified form that repeats the root והתימיווהכיווהילמר־ןבחקפ־לע

הלא־ןבעשוהרשק־רשקיוויתחתךלמיו ldquoAnd Hoshea son of Elah conspired a con-spiracy against Pekah son of Remaliah attacked him and killed him he reignedin place of himrdquo

Read against the sources the historicity of Hoshearsquos coup drsquoeacutetat becomesdoubtful The situation is echoed in the Aramean inscription of the Tel Danstele that claims the regicide of Joram (and Ahaziah) while 2Kgs 924ndash27names Jehu as the killer of both (see above) While one has to admit that bothreports are colored for propagandistic purposes read against the Assyrian prac-tice the installation of Hoshea by the Assyrian king makes considerable sensePerhaps it was also the Assyrian mastermind who drove the revolt against thedisobedient Pekah as Bob Becking suggested ldquoBeide Positionen sind vonihren jeweiligen Perspektiven gepraumlgt und lassen sich in das Bild zusammenfuuml-gen dass der assyrische Koumlnig eine Revolte Hoscheas unterstuumltzt habenkoumlnnterdquo⁹⁴ If this points us in the right direction then also the last revolt in Sa-maria which is pictured so vividly in many versions of the history of Israel in-tentionally misinforms to promote a particular viewpoint

For the discussion on the conquest of Samaria see the chapters of Danrsquoel Kahn and BobBecking in the present volume For the installation of Hoshea as king see Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III277ndash78 Weippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament 147ndash49 Kyle Lawson YoungerJr ldquoThe Summary Inscription 9ndash10 (2117F)rdquo and ldquoThe Summary Inscription 13 (2117G)rdquo inHallo and Younger The Context of Scripture vol 2 291ndash92 Bob Becking ldquoHoscheardquo in Das Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (wwwwibilexde)2012 (httpswwwbibelwissenschaftdestichwort21574 last access 04122017)


4 The Built-in Weakness of the Northern StateSome Conclusions

This viewpoint is a very critical attitude towards the north which does not attrib-ute to it any continuity of governance beyond the Omride and Nimshide dynas-ties This must be contrasted with the allegedly unbroken chain of Davidides inthe south However this continuity becomes suspicious when one considershow heavily biased this account is When we consider the details of Solomonrsquossuccession and the accounts of Athaliah and Joash Joram and Ahaziah it isthe continuity of the Davidic dynasty that becomes suspicious⁹⁵ Anyway the de-scribed instability of the Northern Kingdom is clearly the result of a Judean biasWithin this pattern it is striking that all usurpers of the eighth century carrynon‐Yahwistic names Is this by chance I do not think so but whether this isby chance or partly deliberate cannot be answered Menahem (Miniḫini)Pekah (Paqaḫa) and Hoshea (Auširsquo) are attested in Assyrian sources as namesof the northern monarchy and Menahem or Shallum are names often attestedextra-biblically Hence to be suspicious about the occurrance of non-Yahwisticnames is probably being overly-cautious However it fits the pattern that the ir-regularities of the Northern Kingdom stand in direct contrast to Godrsquos will as ex-pressed in the unified Davidic kingdom in the south One question has to be an-swered at the end of this argument Why is there any continuity in the northerndynasties It is striking that Omri Ahab Ahaziah and Joram and Jehu Jehoa-haz Joash Jeroboam and Zechariah were conceived as dynasties although theywere sometimes judged more harshly than other kings of Samaria I have no ex-planation other than that these prosperous dynasties which were all largelysuccessful in economic political and religious governance could not be easilydisparaged by the Deuteronomists Further historiographical studies are neces-sary to substantiate this

Let me summarize these considerations with a few remarks This paper fo-cused on the portrayal of the last kings of Israel against the background ofthe string of revolts reported in the historical accounts in the Book of KingsThe revolts of Jeroboam Baasha Zimri Tibni Omri Jehu Shallum MenahemPekah and Hoshea have been considered in detail The account of the 15 yearperiod from 747ndash732 BCE in 2Kgs 15 was demonstrated to be a mix of historicaland legendary construction Only meager glimpses of lsquohistoricalrsquo details are

For the discontinuity of the Davidic dynasty see Frevel Geschichte Israels 192 205ndash8216ndash21


given in the biblical account The single reports are linked very much with eachother in terms of keywords phrases geography and particular details Theyform a continuous narrative of depravity instability and even immorality Thisportrayal is not interested in historical correctness but instead distorts the polit-ical history of Samaria deliberately Particularly the detailed information on theAssyrian campaigns from the 12th to the 14th palucirc of Tiglath-pileser III (ie theyears 743ndash743 BCE) is missing Only the list of cities in the Huleh valley of thenorthern territory gives us a clue about the loss of Israelite sovereignty althoughthe portrayal does not reflect the creation of the province of Magidducirc (in 732BCE) The campaign to the Huleh basin is not related to the subjugation of Gileadand Galilee This detail was added to the text by a later gloss for the purpose ofhistorical accuracy It has become clear that the portrayal of the Northern King-dom in 2Kgs 15 does not aim at a historically exact narration of the events It isbiased and interested in the instability of the Northern Kingdom in contrast withDavidic continuity Whether Hoshea Pekah and even Menahem were indeedusurpers by revolution or whether they were installed by the Assyrian powerremains thus open for discussion But we have presented grounds to assumean Assyrian mastermind behind the revolts of Menahem and Hoshea ratherthan individual usurpers who acted on their own account

This bias was particularly apparent in the fact that the text does not differ-entiate explicitly between pro- and contra-Assyrian foreign policy In fact thereare indications that Hoshea and Menahem pleaded (and if under constraint hellip)for a more pro-Assyrian position while Pekah established an anti-Assyrian pol-icy But almost nothing from the struggle in Israel between different positionscan be drawn directly from the text Most inviting to speculation was the oftenenigmatic information given about Menahem outside that in 2Kgs 15 the murderof Shallum the role of Tirzah the regional importance of Gilead and the crueltyto Tiphsah etc We suggested that Menahem erected a rival kingdom in Tirzahand that he gained power in Samaria with the help of Tiglath-pileser III payinga heavy tribute to gain power against the anti-Assyrian Shallum

With regard to the earlier revolts we argued that in particular the accountof Jeroboam I the putsch of Baasha and the struggle of Zimri and Tibni weremore or less inventions The ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquowas characterized as a very effec-tive ldquoinvention of traditionrdquo to blame the Northern Kingdom from its beginningMethodologically speaking the present paper took a very sceptical position onhistoricity for heuristic purposes In discussing the textual evidencewe were un-able to uncover sufficient reliable historical details in the biblical text This paperhas argued on the presumption that the history of the Northern Kingdom wascompiled from administrative lists which existed for the Omride and Nimshidekingdoms However almost all historiography before the Omrides is a retelling of


later stories details and characterizations This became particularly evident inthe discussion of 1Kgs 15 and the presentation of the confrontation betweenJudah and Israel The presentation of the Northern Kingdom is much more a fic-tive narrative than a factual history


Michael Pietsch

Hoshea ben Elah the Last King of IsraelNarrative and History in 2 Kings 171ndash6

1 Introduction

In the controversial discussion about the circumstances that led to the downfallof Samaria there is still an important significance ascribed to the compact ac-count of the events in 2Kgs 171ndash6sup1 The reason for this is not so much thatthe biblical narrative is considered to be of particularly historical value as asource but rather the fact that the cuneiform sources provide contradictory re-ports as to which Assyrian ruler conquered Samaria While the BabylonianChronicle attributes the conquest to Shalmaneser Vsup2 his successor Sargon IIclaims for himself in contemporary inscriptions to have destroyed the city de-ported its inhabitants and incorporated the remaining Samarian state into theAssyrian provincial systemsup3 This finding has been interpreted as either evidencefor two separate military seizures of Samaria⁴ or as an indication for a joint ven-ture of both Assyrian kings⁵ In order to support their interpretation both models

The actual debate is briefly summarized in Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels (StuttgartKohlhammer 2016) 234ndash45 The most thorough treatment of the problem is still offered byBob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill 1992)cf also Nadav Naʾaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)rdquoBib 71 (1990) 206ndash25 and Stefan Timm ldquoDie Eroberung Samarias aus assyrisch-babylonischerSichtrdquo in id ldquoGott kommt von Teman helliprdquo Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte Israels und Syrien-Palauml-stinas ed Claudia Bender and Michael Pietsch (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 2004) 103ndash20 The text of the Babylonian Chronicle dates from the 22nd year of the reign of the Persian kingDarius II (ie 500 BC) but can be traced back to even older traditions The Chronicle mentionsthat in the reign of Shalmaneser V he ldquobrokerdquo (ḫepucirc) the city of Samaria Albert Kirk GraysonAssyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locus Valley NY Augustin 1975) 73 Cf the prism inscription of Sargon II from KalḫuNimrud column IV lines 25ndash41 (cf ManfredWeippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament [Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht2010] 301ndash302) and the somewhat contemporary annals of the king from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsā-bād lines 10ndash 17 which text is however greatly damaged and often complemented by the par-allel report from the Prism Inscription (cf the critical discussion in Becking Fall 39ndash44) Cf Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo JCS 12 (1958) 22ndash40 77ndash100 whose sug-gestion many have followed cf the literature listed in Becking Fall 38 note 78 Cf Herbert Donner Israel unter den Voumllkern Die Stellung der klassischen Propheten des 8 Jahr-hunderts vChr zur Auszligenpolitik der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda (Leiden Brill 1964) 65ndash66 Othersupporters of this interpretation are mentioned in Becking Fall 33 note 56

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-016

invoke particular passages from the biblical account in 2Kgs 171ndash6 that corre-spond to the respective cuneiform writings But in doing so the literary structureand narrative pragmatic of each text are not seriously taken into considerationSuch an analysis should however precede any historical interpretation There-fore this chapter will first discuss the narrative composition of the res gestaeof the last king of Israel Hoshea ben Elah in 2Kgs 171ndash6 In the second partbased on the literary analysis of the episode what one can derive for a historicalreconstruction of ldquothe last days of the kings of Israelrdquo will be considered

2 2Kgs 171ndash6 as Narrative

The passage restarts the narrative plot in the Book of Kings by the syntacticalconstruction x-qāṭal and the temporal modification ldquoin the 12th year of Ahazthe king of Judahrdquo reaching back chronologically beyond the report of thedeath and burial of Ahaz in 2Kgs 1619ndash20 The declaration of the nine-yearreign of the last king of Israel in Samaria (cf v 1b) is taken up again bymeans of the stipulation ldquoin the 9th year of Hosheardquo (v 6) which closes the liter-ary sequence⁶ The syntactical structure of the section reveals a three-part com-position which is marked by the use of the element x-qāṭal the actual narrativefollowing the introductory regnal formula in vv 1ndash2 starts with v 3a as indicatedby the syntactical construction x-qāṭal along with the introduction of the king ofAssyria Shalmaneser V This is continued with a chain of narrative forms untilv 5 and ends with a note about the three-year siege of the city of Samaria bythe Assyrians⁷ The use of a temporal adverb at the beginning of v 6a (cf x-qāṭal) marks yet another break and emphasizes the comment about the captureof the city and the deportation of its inhabitants as the final point of the se-quence in contrast to what precedes it This provides a clear structure of thetext (Fig 1) which goes from vv 1ndash2 across vv 3ndash5 ending in v 6

This observation dissuades the widespread assumption that vv 3ndash4 andvv 5ndash6 contain parallel accounts of the same event which were taken from dif-ferent archival collections⁸ This assumption is also contradicted by the fact that

However the title ldquothe king of Assyriardquooccurs again in vv 24ndash33 linking this passage back tothe narrative in vv 3ndash6 and supposing the identity of the Assyrian king mentioned in both texts The chain of events is interrupted by a relative clause in v 4a giving some background infor-mation on the revolt of Hoshea namely the request for help from the Egyptian pharao and theholding back of the regular tribute to the Assyrian overlord This assumption goes back as far as Hugo Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen (Leip-zig Eduard Pfeiffer 1892) 15ndash25 who supposed that the twofold mention of a military cam-

336 Michael Pietsch

in a synchronic reading the notice on the vassal status of Hoshea in v 3 estab-lishes the factual prerequisite for the Assyrian campaign described in vv 4ndash6and that without vv 3ndash4 some of the syntactical references in vv 5ndash6 were mis-leading⁹ Finally the question remains which type of archival material should

Fig 1 The syntactic structure of 2Kgs 171ndash6 Prepared by the author

paign by Shalmaneser V against Samaria in v 3a and v 5a is due to the literary-critical techniqueof Wiederaufnahme indicating the use of two independent literary sources by the narrator Thefirst of which (represented in vv 3bndash4) was originally connected to the historical account in2Kgs 1529 whereas the second (vv 3a45ndash6) was related to 2Kgs 1530 However the startingpoint for Wincklerrsquos thesis was the observation that the biblical account neither fits with the re-port on the vassal status of Hoshea in the royal inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III nor with theclaim of Sargon II to have conquered the city of Samaria and deported its inhabitants Regardingthe narrative plot of the biblical account in 2Kgs 173ndash6 it is evident that the mentioning of theAssyrian king in v 3a and in v 5a is related to two different events as can easily be learned fromtheir respective context Therefore it is not necessary to regard them as a literary doublet or acase of redactional Wiederaufnahme The narrative sequence from v 4b to vv 5ndash6 may seema little awkward to modern interpreters but it is not to be explained by means of source criti-cism Cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo 103ndash 104 with note 3 ndash Christoph Levin has clearly recognized thedifficulties of a source-critical explanation of the literary structure of the passage and has ar-gued in favor of a redaction-critical analysis based on a comparison with the parallel accountin 2Kgs 189ndash 11 (cf his chapter in the present volume) He presupposes that 2Kgs 189ndash 12 belongto a later editing in the account of the reign of Hezekiah king of Judah Its presentation of the

Hoshea ben Elah the Last King of Israel 337

be considered as a source for the accounts The Samarian royal court can hardlybe consideredsup1⁰

21 The Introductory Regnal Formula (vv 1ndash2)

If we return to the beginning of the passage it has already been said that thesynchronistic dating of the beginning of Hoshearsquos regency in the 12th year ofthe Judean king Ahaz reaches back narratively to a point before the final versesof the previous chapter In 2Kgs 1529ndash30 the narrator has informed the readermore precisely that Hoshea came to power through a military coup (qaeligšaeligr)against the ruling king Pekah after Tiglath-pileser III had annexed the (Upper)Galilee and the region of Gileadsup1sup1 Hence in the narrative plot of the Book of

events has been taken over from the report in 2Kgs 173ndash6 with only a little editorial reworkingand the insertion of v 12 Therefore only those textual elements from 2Kgs 173ndash6 which are alsopresent in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 can be assumed to be the original report of the events This is to be con-firmed by demonstrating that all the secondary elements in the narrative of 2Kgs 173ndash6 (cfvv 3bndash5a) share a common polemical bias discrediting the last king of Israel (cf the textualvariant in the Antiochene reading of v 2b) Regarding the secondary origin of 2Kgs 189ndash12Levin seems to be right The passage interprets Samariarsquos demise as due to the peoplesrsquo (andtheir kingsrsquo respectively) breaking of the covenant with Yhwh by not obeying the Mosaictorah By this means it contrasts Hezekiahrsquos rebellion against Sennacherib ldquothe King of Assyriardquo(cf 2Kgs 187b) with the revolt of Hoshea for Hezekiah did follow the torah of Yhwh (cf v 6) Itwas his intention to explain why the rebellion of Hoshea led to the total loss of political sover-eignty and the deportation of ldquoall Israelrdquowhile Hezekiah even after his revolt failed had only topay some heavy tribute to the Assyrians but remained king in Jerusalem (cf 2Kgs 1813ndash 16) Theeditor was neither interested in the reign of Hoshea itself nor in his personal fate He used onlythe information from 2Kgs 173ndash6 which supports his own argument (eg the events mentionedin v 3 would have weakened the antagonism between Hoshea and Hezekiah) If this proves to becorrect it is not possible to reconstruct any older textual layer in 2Kgs 173ndash6 by means of a com-parison with the account in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 The narrative plot in 2Kgs 173ndash6 however shows noclear indication of a redactional reworking (cf also the chapter by Danʾel Kahn in the presentvolume) 2Kgs 173ndash4 has often been assigned to a Northern tradition originating from the royal an-nals of the court in Samaria but this assumption is not very probable (cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo104 note 3) The events belong to the so-called Syro-Ephraimite War (cf 2Kgs 165ndash9) dating to the years73332ndash73231 BC according to the Eponym Chronicle for the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (cfWeip-pert Textbuch 285ndash87) The narrator claims these territories for Israel but at least Gilead seemsto have been under Aramaean control at this time (cf the chapter by Norma Franklin in the pres-ent volume) ndash Hoshearsquos rebellion is termed in the view of the reigning king Pekah as a militarycoup (qaeligšaeligr cf 2Kgs 174a) without any religious disqualification

338 Michael Pietsch

Kings the note in v 1 reminds the reader of Hoshearsquos violent seizing of powerThe dating of this event in 2Kgs 1530b however is in the 20th year of thereign of Jotham the father of Ahaz who reigned only 16 years according to2Kgs 1533 However according to 2Kgs 161 Ahaz was crowned king in Jerusalemin the 17th year of Pekah king of Israel Since Pekah ruled 20 years according to2Kgs 1527 Hoshea would have ascended the throne in the fourth year of Ahazsup1sup2

The various chronological and text-critical problems apparent in the diver-gent statements do not need to be discussed here in detailsup1sup3 Only a brief com-ment on the synchronism in 2Kgs 171 shall be given The calculation thatleads to the 12th year of Ahaz finds its point of origin it seems neither withthe date of the beginning of the reign of Ahaz nor with the chronology of thereign of Pekah Instead it is to be found in the synchronism between Hezekiahking of Judah and Hoshea in 2Kgs 181 If this is right it has to be assumed thatthe beginning of Hoshearsquos reign has been postdated and that his third regnalyear overlapped with the 15th and 16th year of Ahazsup1⁴ The synchronistic datingof the capture of Samaria in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 on the other hand presupposes thesynchronism in 181sup1⁵ However it is quite obvious that the system of synchron-

The textual and historical difficulties regarding the synchronistic datings in the Book ofKings are discussed in further detail in the chapters by Christian Frevel and Kristin Weingartin the present volume In the transmission of the Greek text different attempts have been made to harmonize thechronological problems present in the Masoretic text However no coherent chronological sys-tem has been reached in the history of textual transmission Therefore it seems difficult to drawany firm conclusions from the textual variants with regard to different chronological systemswithin the sources used by the editor of the Book of Kings as did Joachim Begrich Die Chrono-logie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda und die Quellen des Rahmens der Koumlnigsbuumlcher (TuumlbingenMohr Siebeck 1929) 102ndash 15 This proposal would imply that the beginning of the calendrial year has been already trans-ferred to spring-time in Samaria while in Judah it still remained autumn ndash or at least the oneresponsible for the synchronism understood it in this way Otherwise a short period of co-regen-cy between both Judean kings not attested elsewhere has to be assumed cf the discussion inErasmus Gaszlig Im Strudel der assyrischen Krise (2 Koumlnige 18ndash 19) Ein Beispiel biblischer Ge-schichtsdeutung (Neukirchen-Vluyn Neukirchener 2016) 7 Or is the synchronism in 2Kgs 181 made up by the editor responsible for the insertion ofvv 9ndash 12 into the narrative contrasting the reigns of Hezekiah and Hoshea In the narrativeflow of the Book of Kings the reference to the nameless ldquoKing of Assyriardquo against whom Heze-kiah rebelled (cf 2Kgs 187b) points back to Shalmaneser V who led Israel into exile (cf 2Kgs173ndash6 24ndash28) This could explain the chronological contradiction between the regnal datesin v 1 and the account of Sennacheribrsquos campaign against Judah dated in the 14th year of Heze-kiah according to 2Kgs 1813ndash16


istic dating in the Book of Kings is primarily a product of historiographic reason-ing and cannot simply be taken as face value for historical queries

Following the regnal dates of the king a historiographic evaluation ofHoshearsquos rule is given (v 2) ldquoHe has committed evil in the eyes of Yhwhrdquo(v 2a) This is in accord with the same negative judgment all the kings of Israelreceive (with the single exception of Jehu cf 2Kgs 1030) albeit with one note-worthy qualification ldquobut not like the kings of Israel that came before himrdquo(v 2b) The reproach taken up against the last king of Israel differs from theusual theological pattern without offering a clearer reason in the text itselfsup1⁶In this respect the formulation differs from its closest parallel in 2Kgs 32ndash3There the negative judgment against Jehoram king of Israel the son of Ahabis qualified because he supposedly acted against the cult of Baʿal which his pa-rents promotedsup1⁷ He allowed however the ldquoSin of Jeroboamrdquo the establishmentof two golden calves as idols to be worshiped in Dan and Bethel (cf 2Kgs1228ndash32) to continue which led to a negative overall judgment of his reignA similar argument was the basis of Jehursquos evaluation in 2Kgs 1028ndash31 Yhwhacknowledges that Jehu did ldquowhat is right in my eyesrdquo in that he extinguishedthe cult of Baʿal and executed judgment against the Omride dynasty But because

In the Antiochene text of the Septuagint there is no restriction to the negative evaluation ofthe king On the contrary it is explicitly said that he has done evil in the eyes of Yhwhmore thanany other king of Israel before him (παρὰ πάντας τοὺς γενομένους ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ [= mikkolʾašœr hāyucirc lepānacircw cf 1Kgs 149 1625 30 33]) The downfall of Samaria it is reasoned wasdue to the outstanding evil committed by its last king This textual variant seems to correctthe difficult Masoretic reading by referring to a more common phraseology to which textual pri-ority cannot be ascribed However it has been argued that the phrase occurs in the Masoretictext one last time with regard to Ahab who is stigmatized as the sinful king par excellence(cf 1Kgs 1630 33) In the Antiochene text on the other hand it is also present in 1Kgs 2254(with regard to Ahaziah Ahabrsquos son und successor to the throne) and 2Kgs 172 indicating ause of the phrase not yet biased by the dogmatic stigmatization of king Ahab cf Julio C Tre-bolle ldquoLa caiacuteda de Samariaacute critica textual literaria e histoacuteria de 2Re 173ndash6rdquo Salmanticensis28 (1981) 137ndash52 and the chapter by Timo Tekoniemi in the present volume However with re-gard to 1Kgs 2254 the reading present in the rest of the Greek manuscripts (κατὰ πάντα τὰ γε-νόμενα ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ) might have been reworked in the Antiochene textform to fit the morecommon expression Therefore it does not seem reasonable to assume a dogmatic correction inthe Masoretic text of 1Kgs 2254 nor is the enigmatic reading in 2Kgs 172 due to a similar interest In 2Kgs 32b it is mentioned that Jehoram turned aside the pillar of Baʿal which his fatherhad erected This account contradicts 2Kgs 1026ndash27 ascribing the destruction of the pillar ofBaʿal in Samaria to Jehu However there is no other mention of Ahab erecting a pillar forBaʿal in the Book of Kings The account may want to explain why there is almost no polemicagainst the cult of Baʿal within the Elisha narratives (with exception of 2Kgs 313ndash 14 922 ndashboth referring to the religious acts of Ahab and his wife Jezebel) and why the prophet himselfis partly acting on behalf of the Omride king (cf 2Kgs 6ndash7)

340 Michael Pietsch

he held fast to the ldquoSin of Jeroboamrdquo the length of his dynasty is limited to fourgenerations (vv 29ndash30) This finding could point to the fact that the qualifica-tion of the negative judgment of the king in 2Kgs 172 purports that the worshipof Yhwh in the form of the two golden calves at Dan and at Bethel were no longercontinued in the time of Hosheasup1⁸ This is at least evident in the narrative plot ofthe Book of Kings for the Upper-Galilean city of Dan which is located in the areathat had been annexed by Tiglath-pileser III according to 2Kgs 1529Whether ornot one can reckon with a loss of cultic image in Bethel due to the heavy tributepaid to the Assyrians is less certain regarding the many textual problems in Hos105ndash6

22 The Downfall of Samaria (vv 3ndash6)

221 The Prologue (v 3)

The course of events begins in v 3 introduced by the syntactical construction x-qāṭal By means of the precedence of the prepositional construction lsquoālacircw Hosh-earsquos fate is emphasized and the focus on the king himself is continued beyondthe introductory remarks ldquoAgainst him Shalmaneser the king of Assyria cameuprdquo (v 3a) Mentioning Shalmaneser V by name marks on the one hand a chro-nological transition over and against the previous section in 2Kgs 1517ndash1620where an Assyrian king in the person of Tiglath-pileser III enters the narrativestage of events for the first time in the Book of Kingssup1⁹ On the other hand it es-

Cf Alexander Rofeacute The Prophetical Stories The Narratives about the Prophets in the HebrewBible their Literary Types and History (Jerusalem Magness Press 1988) 98 with note 50 ldquoAc-cording to the Rabbis Hoshea son of Elah removed the praesidia (garrison troops) who had pre-vented the Israelites from making pilgrimages to Jerusalem (bGit 88a bTaʿan 28a bBBat 121b)rdquo Tiglath-pileser III is introduced in 2Kgs 1519ndash20 with the Assyrian name Pūl(u) by which hewas known in Persian and Hellenistic times The episode belongs to the reign of Menahem kingof Israel who is mentioned among the tributaries of Tiglath-pileser III in a list dating to the year738 BC (cfWeippert Textbuch 288ndash90) The name Tiglath-pileser (III) first occurs in the biblicalnarrative in 2Kgs 1529 during the reign of Pekah king of Israel He annexed Northern Galileeand the Transjordanian territories from Israel and led the people into exile The second mention-ing of the Assyrian king by name is related to the same event the anti-Assyrian coalition defeat-ed by the king in the years 73332ndash73231 BC (cf 2Kgs 167ndash9) Hence the narrative compositionin 2Kgs 15ndash16 can be read as if Pul and Tiglath-pileser (III) were two different Assyrian kings (asis supposed in 1Chr 526) who are opposed to different Israelite (and Judean) kings In this casethe reign of Tiglath-pileser III would have been narrowed down to the events related to the so-called Syro-Ephraimite War Hoshea the last king of Israel is then linked to a new Assyrianking Shalmaneser V


tablishes to whom the title ldquothe King of Assyriardquo refers as a function of literarycoherence throughout the story (cf vv 4 5 and 6) The narrator does not give areason for the sudden appearance of the Assyrian king there is also no exacttemporal reference of the event within the reign of Hoshea The idea of a vassalrelationship between Hoshea and Tiglath-pileser III the predecessor of Shalma-neser V on the Assyrian throne is often referred to in order to understand thestatement in v 3asup2⁰ The Book of Kings however is not predisposed to reportanything regarding such a relationship Indeed the mention of the Galileanand Transjordan territories of Israel annexed by Tiglath-pileser III in 2Kgs1529 could be interpreted as punishment for Pekah participating in an anti-As-syrian coalition in the view of 2Kgs 167ndash9 but it is only in 2Kgs 173b that Hosh-earsquos status as an Assyrian vassal is reported for the first time

This corresponds with the observation that v 3 is not mentioning any at-tempt by Hoshea to throw off the Assyrian yoke as is the case in v 4a In addi-tion the sudden appearance of Shalmaneser V and the resulting obligation ofthe king of Israel to pay tribute has a close parallel in connection with thefirst mention of an Assyrian ruler in the Book of Kings in the time of Menahemof Israel in 2Kgs 1519ndash20 He just like Hoshea was able to affect an Assyrianwithdrawal through the payment of a hefty tribute The expansionistic politicsof the Assyrian kings apparently did not need any further rationale In the nar-rative framework of 2Kgs 173ndash6 the comment on Hoshearsquos vassal status sets thestage for the events evolving It has an expository function for what follows

222 Israelrsquos Way into Exile (vv 4ndash6)

The introductory function of v 3 is also highlighted by the temporal phrasekešānāh bešānāh (ldquofrom year to year annuallyrdquo) in v 4a separating the followingevents from what has preceded A closer dating however is just as unclear as inthe exposition In other words when exactly did Hoshea stop paying the annualtribute and began conspirative negotiations with Egypt is unknown to the narra-tor or at least considered meaningless for his narrative presentation The onlyfact important is the situation at hand that the last king of Israel ndash for unknown

Either the vassal status of Hoshea mentioned in v 3b is paralleled to the notion of him pay-ing tribute to Tiglath-pileser III in the royal inscriptions of the Assyrian king (cfWeippert Text-buch 296) or ndash more commonly ndash it is assumed that the Israelite king participated in an anti-Assyrian revolt of some Syro-Palestinian vassal states subdued by Shalmaneser V shortly afterhis accession to the throne cf Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings A New Translationwith Introduction and Commentary (New York Doubleday 1988) 198ndash99

342 Michael Pietsch

reasons ndash decided to revoke his loyalty to the king of Assyria thereby setting thedisastrous events in motion which led to the decline of Samaria and the exile ofIsrael

Whether there is something more to the difficult form of the name of theEgyptian king socircʾ in v 4a perhaps a shortened form of the name Osorkon(IV) or a misunderstood pharaonic titlesup2sup1 plays secondary role for the under-standing of the narrative For the South Palestinian petty states Egypt is theclosest ally without whose military support an uprising against the supremacyof Assyria would be pointlesssup2sup2

Although Hoshearsquos violation of loyalty precedes chronologically the secondemergence of the Assyrian king the narrator only mentions it in a circumstantialclause (textual background cf Fig 1) The progress of the plot line (textual for-ground) is dominated by the king of Assyria who uncovered Hoshearsquos rebel-lionsup2sup3 He is the main character (Fig 2) in the narrative (cf vv 3a 4a1b 5ndash6)

The exposure of the conspiracy resulted in Hoshearsquos arrest the details ofwhich remain vague Neither battle nor siege are mentioned in v 4b Instead

Cf the discussion of the various suggestions in Bernd U Schipper ldquoWer war lsquoSōʾ Koumlnig vonAumlgyptenrsquordquo BN 92 (1998) 71ndash84 Even Yamani of Ashdod sought Egyptian support for his anti-Assyrian activities (cf Morkotin this volume p 131) Therefore the narrated world of the text can demand a certain degree ofhistorical plausibility but it is based on a more general pattern in Syro-Palestinian political af-fairs whose only individual detail the name of the pharao remains obscure Cf the chapter ofRobert Morkot in this volume If Hoshearsquos rebellion is called a coup drsquoetat (qaeligšaeligr) the negative qualification of the term isreasonable from the perspective of the Assyrian overlord However a religious disqualificationof the last king of Israel is not necessarily implied (see above note 11)

Fig 2 Acting characters in 2Kgs 173ndash6 Prepared by the author


the personal consequences of the king are pointed out He is captured by the As-syrians (ʿṣr) and thrown into prison (ʾsr + becirct kaeliglaeligʾ)sup2⁴ The root ʾsr (ldquoto bind totierdquo) appears again later with the Judean kings Jehoahaz and Zedekiah both ofwhom are led into captivity to Egypt and Babylon respectively (cf 2Kgs 2333257) If this was the case for Hoshea as well then his fate would symbolicallypoint to that of Israel (cf v 6) but this is not explicitly said The narrator is rathersilent concerning the future wellbeing of the last king of Israel ndash he is capturedand arrested but still alive In contrast to Necho II and Nebuchadnezzar II(cf 2Kgs 2334 2417) Shalmaneser V did not install a new king in SamariaThis implies that Hoshea is the last king of Israel known by the narrator itdoes not imply however that his reign necessarily ended with his capturesup2⁵

With the comment concerning the capture of Hoshea the narrative comesto a relative end as nothing else is said about the fate of the king also the an-tagonism between Hoshea and the Assyrian king which has dominated the nar-rative plot so far comes to an end (cf Fig 2) But the question remains what theconsequences might be for the people of Israel Hence the silence concerning asuccessor to the Samarian throne points forward to the portrayal of the siege andcapture of the city in vv 5ndash6sup2⁶ The consecutive tempora in v 5 drive the plotforward After Hoshearsquos capture the king of Assyria still identifiable as Shalma-neser V according to the rhetorical outline of the text claimed the remainingstate of Samaria (v 5a) and then moved against the capital city itself whichhe besieged for three years (v 5b) The verb ʿālāh (Fig 3) which functions asa keyword in vv 3ndash5 (cf vv 3a 4a and 5ab) evokes the threatening presenceof the Assyrian king which resulted in Hoshearsquos surrender earlier (cf v 3a) with-

Due to the course of events and according to the spatial references in the narrative plot thecapture of Hoshea must have taken place outside the Samarian territory (cf v 5a) This has led tothe assumption that the king had been summoned to Shalmaneser V and afterwards arrested (cfJehoahaz in 2Kgs 2333) The meaning of the root ʿṣr in the G-stem ldquoto hold backrdquo does not ex-clude this interpretation The sequence of actions described by ʿṣr and ʾsr (+ becirct kaeliglaeligʾ cf Judg1621 25) is in accordance with the narrative plot first Shalmaneser V arrested Hoshea before hesent him to jail This can be seen eg in the short account on Jehoiachinrsquos release in 2Kgs 2527ndash30 datingthe event according to the regnal years of the imprisoned king (cf v 27) A similar chronologicalsystem is used in the Book of Ezekiel cf Ernst Kutsch Die chronologischen Daten des Ezechiel-buches (Freiburg Universitaumltsverlag Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1985) Hence the literary analysis of the narrative plot in 2Kgs 173ndash6 confirms our earlier assump-tion that vv 3ndash4 are neither taken from an independent textual source nor have they beenadded to the passage by a later editor (see above notes 8ndash9)

344 Michael Pietsch

out conflating both events into onesup2⁷ At the same time it points toward Hoshearsquosrefusal to pay tribute in v 4a because he withheld his annual payment to theAssyrian king the Great King marched to Samaria which is named as the explic-it target of the Assyrian advance here for the first timesup2⁸

The consecutive chain of events in the middle section which establishes acoherent structure through the repetition of the root ʿlh arrives at its conclusionwith the comment about the three-year siege of Samaria in v 5b without reachingthe end of the story The actual beginning of the siege is not shared by the nar-rator it is only possible to extrapolate it retrospectively by means of the temporaladverbial phrase ldquoin the 9th year of Hosheardquo at the beginning of v 6 as it wasdone by a later editor in 2Kgs 189ndash 12 synchronizing 2Kgs 175ndash6 with thereign of the Judean king Hezekiah The much-discussed issue of whether it isplausible that Samaria was able to resist the siege of the Assyrian troops forthree years does not seem to concern the narrator He reckons that Hosheaeven while imprisoned remains the legitimate king of Israel until its political

The mention of the Assyrian king campaigning against Samaria in v 5a is not a literary dou-blet to the events mentioned in v 3a because in the first instance Shalmaneser V subduedHoshea and made him a vassal paying an annual tribute while in the second Samaria hasbeen besieged and finally captured and the people sent to exile There is also no reason to as-sume a later origin for the expression bekaringl hāʾāraeligṣ in v 5a due to its absence in the parallelversion of 2Kgs 189 as proposed by Immanuel Benzinger Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Freiburg imBreisgau Mohr Siebeck 1899) 173 The editor of 2Kgs 189ndash 12 seems instead to have compiledboth phrases from 2Kgs 173a and 5a into one Due to his historiographic interest contrastingHoshea with Hezekiah he had to eliminate the first episode of his source text which mentionsthe last king of Israel paying tribute to the Assyrian overlord in order to rescue Samaria frombecoming an Assyrian province as did Hezekiah in 2Kgs 1813ndash 16 (see above note 9) The root ʿālāh occurs twice in v 5 and in vv 3ndash4 Is this a mere coincidence However thedistribution of the root throughout the narrative shows a distinctive literary pattern (andashbndashbprimendashaprime)according to which the conquest of the land (v 5a) corresponds to the withholding of the annualtribute by Hoshea (v 4a cf also the play on words with the roots šwb and yšb in vv 3b and 6b)

Fig 3 The verb ʿālāh as keyword in 2Kgs 173ndash5 Prepared by the author


sovereignty ended The point at which this happened has already been men-tioned in the regnal summary in v 1b

The reference to the 9th year of Hoshea at the beginning of v 6 signals on theone hand the end of the siege of Samaria and marks on the other a narrativebreak It thus reveals the capture of the city and the deportation of its inhabi-tants as the pragmatic climax of the episode and connects the narrative arcback to the dates of Hoshearsquos reign in the introductory formula The capture ofthe city expressed with the verb lākad (ldquoto catch to capturerdquo) does not neces-sarily imply its destruction but instead draws a parallel to the fate of its kingsup2⁹The conquest of Samaria and the exile of its people are attributed to the sameking that is identified at the beginning of the section as Shalmaneser V (cf 2Kgs189ndash 11) He resettled the deportees in central Assyria and in the Northeasternborder areas (v 6b)sup3⁰ The expression wayyošaeligb ʾotām in v 6b phonetically ass-onates the notice of Hoshea paying tribute to the Assyrian king in v 3b (wayyā-šaeligb locirc minḫāh) Instead of paying tribute Israel itself is now brought to AssyriaThe second confrontation with the Assyrians ended badly for Israel with the loss

The root lākad with a personal object has the meaning ldquoto catchrdquo either humans (especiallyprisoners of war) or animals with cities or territories as object it means ldquoto take possession of toconquerrdquo (cf Akkadian kašādu) It always implies violence and a loss of freedom but not nec-essarily physical destruction cf Heinrich Groszlig ldquo דכל lāḵaḏrdquoThWAT 4 (1984) 573ndash76 Hence ona literary level the conquest of the city corresponds to the fate of its last king In a historicalperspective however the literary depiction of the events coincides with the archaeological re-cord in Sebaṣtye (Samaria) where no signs of a massive destruction of the city in the 8th centuryBC have been found cf Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria vol 2 The EighthCentury BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2001) 558ndash75 The reference to the cities of the Medes may indicate that the deportations mentioned in v 6bdid not happen before the reign of Sargon II who in 716 BC subdued the Eastern border region ofthe Assyrian empire and incorporated it into the Assyrian provincial system (cf the chapter byKaren Radner in the present volume) However the massive deportations carried out by the As-syrian kings over a long period led to an ongoing exchange of people from all parts of the As-syrian empire Thus the deportation of the Samarians (as well as the resettlement of foreign peo-ple into the territory of Samaria cf 2Kgs 1724) is not to be imagined as a single event but hastaken place over a period of time It may well have started under the reign of Shalmaneser V andcontinued far into the time of Sargon II cf Bustenay Oded Mass Deportations and Deportees inthe Neo Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 1979) and the chapter of Karen Radner inthis volume In 2Kgs 176 the continuing process of deportations has been reorganized in a singlenarrative plot and ascribed to ldquothe King of Assyriardquo Whether the narrator had any particularknowledge about the settlement places of the deportees from Samaria (or their heirs) remainsuncertain There are references in the cuneiform sources to peoples possibly related to the de-portees from Samaria in the regions mentioned in the biblical account until the end of the 7th

century BC (cf Becking Fall 61ndash93 and the chapter by Karen Radner in the present volume)

346 Michael Pietsch

of political sovereignty and deportation of its people into a foreign country Thepeople finally share the same fate as their last king

3 Who Conquered Samaria

As mentioned at the beginning the cuneiform sources contain contrasting infor-mation concerning the events leading up to the downfall of Samaria Aside fromthe widely discussed alternatives of whether the capture of the city can be attrib-uted to Shalmaneser V or Sargon II there are further questions that arise whenthe biblical narrative in 2Kgs 173ndash6 is taken into consideration If ShalmaneserV was responsible for the conquest of Samaria at which point during his five-year reign did this take place Was the capture of the city preceded by athree-year siege Was the city handed over (by Hoshea) or was it taken byforce Was Samaria already made into an Assyrian province and the people de-ported under Shalmaneser V or did it all happen under Sargon II Did Sargon IIalready overthrow Samaria in his accession year or not before his second palucircThe list goes on and the manifold problems cannot be discussed here in detailsup3sup1The following observations will merely give a brief sketch of what contributionthe presentation of the events in 2Kgs 171ndash6 being aware of the narrative prag-matic of the passage is able to bring to bear on the discussion concerning thehistorical circumstances of the conquest of Samaria as well as which (narrow)limits are hidden in such an endeavor It is however not my primary interestto establish the historical validity of the biblical account but to point to the var-ious historical propositions upon which its interpretations generally depend

31 The Chronology

The first set of problems to address is about the chronology of events Aside fromthe contradictory information contained in the synchronistic framework of theBook of Kings which later have been reworked in the process of textual trans-missionsup3sup2 we do not have any closer knowledge about the regnal dates of the

Cf the discussion in the chapters by Eckart Frahm Norma Franklin Karen Radner and RonTappy in the present volume Eg in the divergent textforms of the Septuagint the reigning years of the earlier kings Me-nahem Pekahia and Pekah have been (with variations) enlarged to fit the given synchronisms ndasha practice still in use in modern scholarship


last king of Israel Therefore it is nearly impossible to achieve a reliable set ofdata that can bear the weight of historical scrutiny This is evident for the contra-dictory dates regarding the beginning of Hoshearsquos reign (cf 2Kgs 1530 with 171)and concerns just as much the synchronism between the downfall of Samariaand the reign of Hezekiah (cf 2Kgs 181 with 189 11) which stands in contradic-tion to the date of the third military campaign of Sennacherib which took placein the year 701 BC in the 14th year of Hezekiah (cf 2Kgs 1813)sup3sup3 However thenine-year reign of Hoshea is often seen as historically reliable informationwhich has been used to firmly establish the date of the downfall of Samariasup3⁴But when did it start To more closely determine the date of Hoshearsquos accessionto the throne it is necessary to take a closer look at the royal inscriptions of Ti-glath-pileser IIIsup3⁵

In his various summary inscriptions the Assyrian king mentions his submis-sion of Israel the installation of Hoshea as a vassal king and the collection oftributary paymentssup3⁶ Because the summary inscriptions do not follow a chrono-logical order the date of these events can only be determined by a comparisonwith the Eponym Chronicle which mentions for Tiglath-pileser III a militarycampaign against Damascus in the year 73332 and 73231 BC respectivelywhich most likely are related to the anti-Assyrian alliance also mentioned in2Kgs 165ndash9sup3⁷ It is often assumed that Samaria was already subdued duringthe first campaign of Tiglath-pileser III in the year 73332 BCsup3⁸ It is not clearhowever whether Hoshearsquos revolt according to 2Kgs 1530 occurred during

Becking Fall 53ndash54 tried to harmonize both dates by ascribing the date in 2Kgs 1813 to amilitary campaign of Sargon II to Palestine in the year 715 BC and assuming it was later errone-ously connected with Sennacheribrsquos siege of Jerusalem Assuming the nine-year reign of Hoshea is certain either the date of Hoshearsquos accession yearor the date of the fall of Samaria vary in the scholarly debate cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo115 note 49On the other hand some scholars have supposed a longer reign for the last king of Israel basedon the cuneiform sources cf Rudolf Kittel Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck ampRuprecht 1900) 273ndash74 and Albrecht Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige vol 2 Das zweite Buchder Koumlnige (Muumlnster Aschendorff 1912) 211ndash12 Cf the latest edition of the texts by Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscrip-tions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Wi-nona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) Cf Weippert Textbuch 295 and Tadmor and Yamada Inscriptions 105ndash 106 112 131ndash32 Cf Weippert Textbuch 288 Tiglath-pileser III had already campaigned in Palestine in theyear 73433 BC in order to subdue a rebellion of the Philistine coastal cities and to secure theborder to Egypt Or did Israel lose parts of its territory already during Tiglath-pileserrsquos campaign against Gazain the year 73433 BC According to the archaeological record it seems that the coastal strip wasno longer under Israelite control in the second half of the 8th century BC

348 Michael Pietsch

this conflict or followed shortly thereaftersup3⁹ Tiglath-pileser III mentions thatHoshea paid his tribute in the South-Babylonian city of Sarrabānu⁴⁰ Since theAssyrian king according to the Eponym Chronicle was engaged in a militarycampaign in this region in the year 73130 BC it would be obvious to connectthe payment of tribute with these events⁴sup1 If this tribute was Hoshearsquos first pay-ment to the Assyrian suzerain as is usually presumed it would follow that thefirst year of Hoshearsquos reign was in the year 73231 BC (or 73130 BC respectively)⁴sup2

This dating can be connected to the notice of the Babylonian Chroniclewhich attributes the conquest of Samaria to Shalmaneser V (cf 2Kgs 173ndash6)who reigned between 727 and 722 BC An even more exact dating of the eventhowever cannot be garnered from the text of the Babylonian Chronicle The as-sumption that Shalmaneser V took possession of Samaria only at the end of hisreign finds its basis on a misunderstanding of the compositional structure of theChronicle⁴sup3 Presupposing Hoshearsquos accession to the throne in Samaria in the

The wording of the Summary Inscription no 13 lines 17ndash18 indicates that Pekah was mur-dered only after Tiglath-pileser III had annexed the Galilean and Transjordan territories of Israel(cf Tadmor and Yamada Inscriptions 112) ndash perhaps to prevent any attempt to further supportthe former ally Rezin king of Damascus who withstood the Assyrian attack in 73332 BC Summary Inscription no 9 lines r 10ndash 11 (cf Weippert Textbuch 295 and Tadmor and Ya-mada Inscriptions 132) Cf Rykle Borger and Hayim Tadmor ldquoZwei Beitraumlge zur alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft auf-grund der Inschriften Tiglatpilesers IIIrdquo ZAW 94 (1982) 244ndash51 244ndash49 The BabylonianChronicle however mentions that Tiglath-pileser III did not defeat Nabucirc-mukin-zeri until theyear 72928 BC when he became king of Babylon himself (cf column I lines 19ndash23) ThereforeHoshea could have paid his tribute to the Assyrian king in Sarrabānu at this later date as wellcf Gaszlig Strudel 3ndash4 However a date of Hoshearsquos coup years after Tiglath-pileser III had reor-ganized the political landscape of Syro-Palestine seems less probable The list of Western tributaries in the Summary Inscription of Tiglath-pileser III no 7 r 7ndash13(cfWeippert Textbuch 289ndash90) probably composed in the year 72928 BC fails to mention Sa-maria and Damascus indicating that it may represent the political situation of the year 73332 BC when both rebelled against the Assyrian dominion cf Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptionsof Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Edition with Introductions Translations and Com-mentary (Jerusalem The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1994) 268 The fragmen-tary character of the inscription however does allow different interpretations Cf Becking Fall 24 ndash The Eponym Chronicle for Shalmaneser V is heavily damaged In his2nd to 4th year the king undertook military campaigns but the names of his targets are not pre-served In his first regnal year (72625 BC) he stayed in Assyria cf Alan R Millard The Eponymsof the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1994) 59The entry for his last year is too damaged to draw further conclusions However there areother hints to military activities carried out by Shalmaneser V in Southern Syria and Babyloniarespectively but their dating remains uncertain cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo 110ndash11 What can be


year 73231 BC along with the information concerning his nine-year reign a rel-ative precise point in time for the conquest of Samaria by Shalmaneser V be-comes apparent which is compatible with the dates in the Babylonian Chroni-cle⁴⁴ If instead Sargon II has a right to his claim that he conquered Samariain his accession year (ie 72221 BC) then Hoshea could not have come intopower before the year 73029 BC or else the reign of the last king of Israelmust be calculated independent from the biblical chronology

32 The Course of Events

What is the situation concerning the information the sources provide on the se-quence of events In the Babylonian Chronicle it is only mentioned that Shalma-neser V ldquobrokerdquo Samaria (ḫepucirc) However the Akkadian verb ḫepucirc is used inother passages of the Babylonian Chronicle as an expression indicating the con-quest of cities and regions For this reason one can translate it ldquoto conquerrdquo orldquoto capturerdquo without necessarily implying a violent destruction⁴⁵ On the otherhand Sargon II presents the conquest of Samaria in a much more detailed man-ner he fought against its people and conquered (kašādu) the city deported itsinhabitants resettled deportees from other conquered areas installed a provin-cial governor and established tributes and taxes from the people All of this sup-

said for sure is that Shalmaneser V did not capture Samaria earlier than his second regnal year(72524 BC) It is likely that Hoshea (together with other Western vassal states) took advantage of the po-litical turmoil in the Assyrian homeland following Shalmaneserrsquos V accession to the thronewhich forced the king to stay at home in his first regnal year (see above note 43) Did theking first subdue the revolt in Southern Babylonia mentioned in an Aramaean letter from the7th century BC (cf KAI no 233 line 15) before he turned to the West Cf Weippert Textbuch 296ndash97 However Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo 107ndash 108 concluded from acomparison of the account concerning the capture of the cities of Ḫarratum and Ḫirimma bySennacherib in the Babylonian Chronicle (cf column II lines 24ndash25) with the parallel accountin the Annals of the king (cf column I lines 54ndash63) that ldquoḫepucirc bedeutet im uumlbertragenen Ge-brauch der babylonischen Chronik grausamste Bestrafung der Gegner Ablieferung schwerenTributs und administrative Neuordnung des eroberten Gebietesrdquo cf also Becking Fall 24ndash25But a closer analysis of the passage reveals that both cities have been treated by Sennacheribin quite different ways regarding Ḫarratum it is only said that the city had to pay heavy tributeIn the case of Ḫirimma a violent destruction of the city mutilation of the dead bodies of theenemies and an administrative reorganization of its territory is mentioned Both events havebeen summarized in the Babylonian Chronicle with the term ḫepucirc used here in a more generalsense of ldquoto break (someonersquos resistance) to subduerdquo cf Naʾaman ldquoBackgroundrdquo 211

350 Michael Pietsch

posedly occurred in the year of the kingrsquos accession to the throne according tothe Annals of Sargon II from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsābād⁴⁶

The annals are dated however from later in the reign of the king⁴⁷ The ear-lier inscriptions of Sargon II are not (yet) aware of these events and only mentionSamaria in the context of the revolt of Ilu-biʾdi of Hamath which Sargon II sur-pressed in the second year of his reign (ie 72019 BC)⁴⁸ The literary form of theportrayal in the annals follows already existing patterns and is linked to eventsthat occurred over a period of time during the reign of Sargon II⁴⁹ This couldindicate that the author(s) of the royal annals freely constructed the campaignof Sargon II against Samaria in the accession year of the king drawing onolder material and imitating the typical style of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptionsThis may have been done to conceal the fact that Sargon II was not capable ofany military undertakings due to the political turmoil in the wake of his claimingthe throne⁵⁰ Assuming this is correct it would support the assertion of the Bab-ylonian Chronicle that the conquest of Samaria occurred at the hand of Shalma-neser V

The biblical tradition mentions a three-year siege or more aptly stated ablockade of Samaria about which the Assyrian sources remain silent⁵sup1 It also

Cf the Annals of Sargon II lines 10ndash17 The fragmentary text of the annals is mostly restoredaccording to the parallel account in the Prism Inscription of Sargon II from KalḫuNimrud col-umn IV lines 25ndash41 cf Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (GoumlttingenCuvullier 1994 87ndash88) The latter however does not allow a precise dating of the events Ashorter version of the story is preserved in the Summary Inscription of Sargon II from Dūr-Šar-rukēnḪorsābād lines 23ndash25 cf Weippert Textbuch 302 The annals of Sargon II from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsābād were not composed before his 15th palucirc(cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo 115) the Prism-Inscription from KalḫuNimrud dates from around thesame time or shortly thereafter (see above note 3) Cf the Assur Charter of Sargon II lines 16ndash28 probably written shortly after the events andthe recently discovered Tell Tayinat Stele of Sargon II cf Jacob Lauinger and Stephen Batiuk ldquoAStele of Sargon II at Tell Tayinatrdquo ZA 105 (2015) 54ndash68 and the chapter by Eckart Frahm in thepresent volume Here a remarkable parallel to the biblical narrative in 2Kgs 173ndash6 can be notedwhere a sim-ilar literary technique is to be observed cf already the remarks by John Gray I amp II Kings ACommentary (London SCM Press 1977 third edition) 60ndash62 Cf the chapter by Eckart Frahm in the present volume ndash The account in the annals that themilitary campaign against Samaria had already occurred in the accession year of Sargon II raisessome logistical problems as well because there are only a few weeks left between his accessionto the throne on the 12th of Ṭebēt (cf Babylonian Chronicle column I line 31) and the beginningof his first regnal year on the 1st of Nisān Additionally the turmoil following the death of Shal-maneser V probably made it necessary for the king to stay at home The fragmentary text of the Eponym Chronicle for Shalmaneser V does not completely ruleout a three-year siege of Samaria as mentioned in 2Kgs 175ndash6 but this would leave very little


appears unlikely that the city managed to muster the strength to resist the siegefor a considerable time even after the capture of Hoshea⁵sup2 Furthermore onemust reckon that the events as reported in 2Kgs 173ndash6 are ordered in a singlecontinuous narrative plot even though historically they most likely occurredover a much longer period of time This can be seen from the following observa-tions first the regions in which the Israelites according to 2Kgs 176b are sup-posed to have been resettled could only have been firmly incorporated in partinto the Assyrian provincial system under Sargon II⁵sup3 and second consideringthe literary structure of the chapter the resettlement of foreign deportees inthe territory of Samaria (cf 2Kgs 1724) is ascribed to the same king of Assyriawho had conquered Israel and sent the people into exile and who the cuneiformsources identify as Sargon II⁵⁴ Therefore the motif of the three-year siege of thecity of Samaria is to be understood primarily as a narrative figure to develop theplot establishing a coherent literary thread This however would be historicallycorrect in that the procedure of transforming conquered regions into an Assyrianprovince along with an expansive resettlement of the inhabitants would requiremore time than would have been possible at the hand of Shalmaneser V aloneas the inscriptions of Sargon II confirm A (short-lived) blockade of Samaria by

time for the other military campaigns the king had undertaken during his reign (see above note44) However the account from Menander mentioned by Josephus (cf Ant IX132) in whichShalmaneser V besieged Tyros for five years is not to be connected to the fall of Samaria butmost probably belongs to another time cf Ariel M Bagg Die Assyrer und das Westland Studienzur historischen Geographie und Herrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1 Jt vuZ (Leuven Peeters2011) 228ndash29 ndash In the Summary Inscription of Sargon II from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsābād the kingclaims that he laid siege (lemucirc) against Samaria and conquered (kašādu) the city (cf line 23) butthis is the only passage in the royal inscriptions of Sargon II which mentions a siege of SamariaThus a three-year blockade would be in contrast to the reports of the event in the kingrsquos annalsand in his Prism-Inscription from KalḫuNimrud dating from around the same time The contraryargument by M Christine Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Reason for Rejecting the Hy-pothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ 64 (2002) 59ndash77 is not convincing Therefore J Maxwell Miller and John H Hayes A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Louis-ville KTWestminster John Knox Press 2006 second edition) 386ndash87 assumed that after Hosh-ea has been captured he was followed by another king on the throne in Samaria whose name isnot known to us anymore but there is no evidence in the sources to foster their argument cfGaszlig Strudel 14 note 52 See above note 30 Cf the reference to some Arabic tribes Sargon II has resettled in Samaria in his Cylinder-In-scription from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsābād The episode is dated in the annals of the king to his 7th

palȗ (715 BC) cf Weippert Textbuch 305ndash306 Of course this does not rule out the possibilitythat other deportees had been resettled in Samaria at an earlier time starting with the reign ofShalmaneser V

352 Michael Pietsch

Shalmaneser V might have happened a three-year siege of the city however ishistorically less plausible⁵⁵ Hence the ldquoking-lessrdquo resistence of Samaria seemsto be a literary construct that does not need any historical explanation

The same is true regarding the notice that Hoshea first became an Assyrianvassal under Shalmaneser V at a time of his reign not precisely determined(cf 2Kgs 173) According to the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Hoshea wasfrom the beginning of his reign under Assyrian domination For this reasonthe events mentioned in v 3 are often connected to a revolt of some vassal statesin Southern Syria which used the turmoil occurring in Assyria after the acces-sion of Shalmaneser V as an occasion to throw off the Assyrian yoke⁵⁶ The as-sumption that a group of Syro-Palestinian petty states took advantage of the po-litical unrest in Assyria in order to build an anti-Assyrian coalition possesses acertain amount of plausibility⁵⁷ This however serves more likely as the back-ground for the rebellion which led to the downfall of Samaria (cf 2Kgs174ndash6) The idea that Shalmaneser V mounted a second campaign against Sa-maria in such a short reign is less likely Moreover it remains unclear what rea-son there might have been for Hoshea (and his allies) to stage such a revolt laterin the reign of the Assyrian king If one takes into account that the narrator of theBook of Kings is silent about the vassal status of Hoshea under Tiglath-pileser III(cf 2Kgs 1530) and that 2Kgs 173 represents the narrative exposition for the re-port on the downfall of Samaria then it seems to be futile to search for any his-torical cause for the first advance of Shalmaneser V against Hoshea⁵⁸

Hoshearsquos insurgency against the Assyrian rule might be connected with abroader revolt of some Syro-Palestinian vassal states along with Egyptiansupport about which little more is known aside from the comment in 2Kgs

Cf Hermann Michael Niemann ldquoRoyal Samaria ndash Capital or Residence or The Foundationof the City of Samaria by Sargon IIrdquo in id History of Ancient Israel Archaeology and Bible Col-lected Essays ed Meik Gerhards (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 2015) 295ndash315 305ndash307 Cf the discussion in Naʾaman ldquoBackgroundrdquo 213ndash 16 and Becking Fall 50ndash51 However this is not to be argued due to the reference from Menander in Josephus (see abovenote 51) but due to the fact that Shalmaneser V according to the Eponym Chronicle stayed athome in his first regnal year cf Jean-Jacques Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles trans Benja-min R Foster (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2004) 174 It can be reasoned that thestruggle with his political adversaries in Assyria (and Babylonia) encouraged the Western vassalstates to throw off the Assyrian yoke but no further information has been preserved on thecourse of events in Assyria after Shalmaneser V acceded to the throne Cf Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of SamariardquoCBQ 57(1995) 52ndash56 62ndash63


174a⁵⁹ The identity of the Egyptian pharaoh whose name (or title) is Socircʾ in thebiblical account is unresolved⁶⁰ In addition it remains questionable whetherthe narrator had any closer knowledge about the political situation in thattime or whether his narrative is mandatory to a common historical patternThe historical plausibility of an alliance with Egypt certainly cannot be deniedSuch an endeavor however would have not likely been met with much successconsidering the unstable political conditions along with competing claims topower in Egypt at that time⁶sup1

4 In Conclusion

No matter how one wants to judge the details each historical query of the eventsleading to the downfall of Samaria must take into consideration that the narra-tive in 2Kgs 173ndash6 pursues primarily an historiographic interest which subse-quently incorporates the individual narrative elements into the story Thismakes an historical analysis palpably difficult even when dispensing with thetask of verifying its historical value In this case it leads to the result that thebasic information concerning the dates in the narrative can be correlated withthe cuneiform reports The narrative does possess a general historical plausibil-ity but it does not allow a closer historical reconstruction of the course of eventswhich underlies many historicizing interpretations Neither is the biblical ac-count in 2Kgs 173ndash6 able to say what exactly happened in ldquothe last days ofthe kings of Israelrdquo nor should an historical reconstruction of the events bemade the ultimate measure of the interpretation of the text The lsquobiblicalrsquo answerto the question ldquoWho conquered Samariardquo is just as unambigious as it is ambi-gious ldquothe King of Assyriardquo

Cf Herbert Donner Geschichte Israels und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzuumlgen vol 2Von der Kouml-nigszeit bis zu Alexander dem Groszligen Mit einem Ausblick auf die Geschichte des Judentums bisBar Kochba (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1995 second edition) 345 Naʾaman ldquoBack-groundrdquo 217ndash 19 connects the account with an anti-Assyrian revolt following the accession ofSargon II to the throne subdued by the king in the year 72019 BC Thus he argues in favor ofSargon II as the Assyrian king who conquered Samaria but his proposal raises more questionsthan it can answer Cf the discussion in Naʾaman ldquoBackgroundrdquo 216ndash 17 and Schipper ldquoSōʾrdquo Cf Donner Koumlnigszeit 344ndash45

354 Michael Pietsch

Georg Hentschel

Did Hoshea of Israel Continue the ForeignPolicy of His Predecessors

1 Introduction

Why and how did the decline of the Northern Kingdom come about Did Hosheaits last king have a chance to avert the fall of his kingdom Peter Dubovskyacutewhen analysing 2Kgs 15 recently highlighted that some of the issues that mayhave contributed to the Fall of Samaria predate Hoshearsquos coming to powerMost importantly perhaps a series of coups drsquoeacutetat made the kingdom moreand more unstable ldquoWhile the first three coups drsquoeacutetat are spread over almost200 years the last four took place within 20 yearsrdquosup1 Dubovskyacute also pointed tothe rivalry between the tribes and the cities to a gradual loss of executivepower to various atrocities to the heavy burden of tribute due to the AssyrianEmpire and to ldquoIsraelrsquos wrong international policyrdquosup2

This assessment leads to our question for this chapter Did Hoshea continuethe disastrous policy of his predecessors on the throne of Israel or did he try tofind a way out Can we even hope to achieve a satisfying answer Are we in anyposition to assess the behaviour of a single person at the end of the eighth cen-tury BCE Although it seems that we know the most important events only inrough outline a great many articles and even monographs discuss the topic ofthe ldquoLast Days of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo in detail

2 Hoshearsquos Predecessors

For a long time the Northern Kingdom was strong enough to stand up againstits enemies According to the inscriptions of Shalmaneser III of Assyria Ahabof Israel took part in the battle at Qarqar (853 BCE) with 2000 chariots and10000 mensup3 when he rose against the Assyrian Empire to defend the independ-ence and sovereignty of the Levant together with other regional kingdoms But

Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fall According to 2 Kings 15rdquoBib 95 (2014)321ndash46 esp 326 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 342ndash43 Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858ndash754 BC) (TorontoToronto University Press 1996) A01022 ii 91ndash92

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-017

only a decade later in 841 BCE the Assyrian evidence shows Jehu of Israel pay-ing tribute to Shalmaneser III⁴ And he was not the only king of his dynasty whohad to recognise the great power of Assyria as Suichi Hasegawa presented in hissurvey about the biblical and Assyrian sources Jehursquos grandson Joash also paidtribute to Adad-nerari III and perhaps in 796 BCE⁵ It was certainly not easy for aruler of Israel to kneel down and to kiss the feet of the great king of Assyria Butdid he have an alternative The years after the Assyrian retreat from the Levantin 829 BCE and before the beginning of new campaigns in 805 BCE were difficultfor the Northern Kingdom because in these years Hazael and his son Ben-Hadad the kings of Aram in Damascus exercised their power over Israel Atthat time nobody would have imagined that one day Aram and Israel couldbe allies

Jehursquos dynasty ended with a conspiracy Shallum killed Zechariah the lastking of the dynasty (2Kgs 1510) Unfortunately we do not know anythingabout the reasons for this assassination Marvin S Sweeney assumes that Shal-lum ldquowas likely motivated by an interest in changing Israelrsquos alignment from As-syria to Aramrdquo⁶ But this is to be doubted as during Jeroboam IIrsquos reign therewas no Assyrian attack against Israel On the contrary Jeroboam was able to ex-pand his territory (2Kgs 1425) I prefer Dubovskyacutersquos view that Zechariahrsquos murderis a symptom of the instability of the Northern Kingdom and one of the reasonsfor its eventual downfall⁷

Shallumrsquos reign lasted only for one month (2Kgs 1513) and then he was kil-led by Menahem But this man did not form a conspiracy as Shallum had(151015)⁸ According to Dubovskyacute the biblical author ldquowanted to underlinethe contrast between the coups drsquoeacutetat of Shallum Pekah and Hoshea and ofMenahemrdquo⁹ Perhaps this is an indication that Menahemrsquos action was not unlaw-ful One may take the view that he wanted to rid the country of a murderer on thethrone Menahem came from Tirzah which was in the time before Omri the res-

Grayson Assyrian Rulers A010288 Grayson Assyrian Rulers A01047 8 cf Shuichi Hasegawa Aram and Israel during the Je-huite Dynasty (BerlinBoston MA de Gruyter 2012) 119 Marvin S Sweeney I amp II Kings A Commentary (Louisville KY Westminster John Knox Press2007) 371 Cf Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoSuspicious Similiarities a comparative Study of the Falls of Sa-maria and Jerusalemrdquo in The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah ed Peter DubovskyacuteDominik Markl and Jean-Pierre Sonnet (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2016) 47ndash71 esp 58 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 322ndash26 The author uses the narrative forms לעיו אביו and ךיו but not רשקיו Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reign before the Assyrian Invasion (2 Kings 1514ndash 16)rdquo in Liter-ature as Politics Politics as Literature ed David SVanderhooft and Abraham Winitzer (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2014) 29ndash45 esp 34 Cf 1Kgs 1527ndash28 169ndash 10 2Kgs 1525 30

356 Georg Hentschel

idence city of Israelrsquos kings (1Kgs 1417 1521 33 166 8ndash9 15 17 f) The expres-sion ldquofrom Tirzahrdquo (2Kgs 1516a) may indicate according to Dubovskyacute ldquothat hestarted his campaign in Tirzah and moved toward Tiphsahrdquosup1⁰ He succeeded inconquering the city of Tiphsah if this name indeed belongs to the originaltextsup1sup1 The majority of the Septuagint manuscripts explain that he ravaged Tiph-sah because ldquoit had not opened its gates to himrdquosup1sup2 But the Hebrew text abstainsfrom an explanation ldquoIndeed he did not (just) breach (it) but struck (it)downrdquosup1sup3 Do we have here an allusion to Solomonrsquos realm who is said to havereigned over the whole territory between Tiphsah and Gaza (1Kgs 54) Buthow does this correspond with the next sentence that Menahem committed cru-elties He is said to have ldquoripped open all pregnant womenrdquo (2Kgs 1516d) Doeshe not perpetrate the same crime as Hazael the king of Aram (812) Menahemrsquosimage is contradictory

A question of historical relevance remains Did Menahem really reach Tiph-sah on the banks of the Euphrates Was he successful in a similar way to Jero-boam II (1425) A campaign towards the east would have been possible only inMenahemrsquos first years ie in 748 BCEsup1⁴ After the accession of the mighty Ti-glath-pileser III (r 745ndash727 BCE) to the Assyrian throne there was no chancefor such an adventure The framework of the Book of Kings on Menahem revealshis weakness He had to pay a heavy tribute to Tiglath-pileser III ldquoHe gave hima thousand talents of silver to obtain his help in strengthening his hold on thekingdomrdquo (1519) Menahemrsquos subjugation is confirmed by Tiglath-pileserrsquos an-nals and also attested on his royal stele from Iransup1⁵ Probably this tribute was

Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reignrdquo 33 Lucianic manuscripts read Ταφωε or Ταφοε ldquowhich corresponds to the city חופת rdquo so Du-bovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reignrdquo 30f Tappuah may be identified with Tell Sheikh Abu Zarad15 km southeast of Nablus The Lucianic manuscripts read the singular of the verb which corresponds to חתפ Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reignrdquo 42 Georg Hentschel ldquoAlter und Herkunft der Synchronismen in den Koumlnigsbuumlchernrdquo NichtsNeues unter der Sonne Zeitvorstellungen im Alten Testament Festschrift fuumlr Ernst-JoachimWaschke ed Jens Kotjatko-Reeb Benjamin Ziemer and Stefan Schorch (BerlinBoston MA deGruyter 2014) 171ndash85 esp 182 Unfortunately there are mistakes in the dates of his predeces-sors Jeroboam reigned until 749 BCE Zechariah had been killed six months later in 748 BCEShallum died yet in the same year and Menahem began to reign Annals Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Editionwith Introductions Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences andHumanities 1994) 68ndash9 Ann 13 10 = Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscrip-tions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Wi-nona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) no 14 10 Tadmor Inscriptions 89 Ann 27 2 = Tadmor andYamada Royal Inscriptions no 32 2 stele Tadmor Inscriptions 106ndash107 IIIA 5 = Tadmor and

Did Hoshea of Israel Continue the Foreign Policy of His Predecessors 357

paid in the year 738 BCE Because Menahem himself could not pay the tributehe ldquolaid a levy on all men of wealth in Israel and each had to give the king ofAssyria fifty silver shekelsrdquo (1520) By this levy of course the dissatisfactionof the population increased as Dubovskyacute puts it ldquodrawing on the wallets of72000 nobles must have severely undermined Menahemrsquos popularityrdquosup1⁶ Butthe support of Tiglath-pileser was also very usefulWhen Menahem died ndash short-ly after delivering the tribute ndash his son was able to ascend to the throne of theNorthern Kingdom

Menahemrsquos son Pekahiah reigned for just two years The circumstances ofhis assassination show how difficult the situation had become in the meantimePekahiah was killed ldquoin the safest place of the kingdomrdquo and ldquonot even the mostprotected place of the kingdom ndash the keep of the royal palace in Samaria ndash wassafe enough to protect the king against conspiratorsrdquo as Dubovskyacute stressessup1⁷That was possible because Pekah Pekahiahrsquos assassin belonged to the centreof power He was ldquoPekahiahrsquos third man ie the officer of the kingrsquos entour-agerdquosup1⁸ But Pekah was not alone he headed a conspiracy with fifty men fromGilead at his side and was according to Becking possibly ldquoan exponent of aTransjordan political partyrdquosup1⁹ Tomoo Ishida already discerned ldquoa power strugglebetween Gileadites and the men of Manasseh in the changes of dynastiesrdquosup2⁰

But the regicide was not only the result of tensions among the tribes Peka-hiah followed his father Menahemrsquos foreign policy Is it possible that his murder-er Pekah opposed this and wanted to terminate Israelrsquos subjugation to the Assyr-ians If we want to find out about Pekahrsquos political views we cannot ignorethe campaign against Jerusalem Rezin of Damascus and Pekah went togethersouthwards and besieged Ahaz of Judah (2Kgs 165 Isa 71 2) They wanted toappoint a new king (Isa 75) Can we hypothesise that Ahaz was not willing tojoin their anti-Assyrian coalition To quote John Bright Ahaz ldquosaw no coursesave to appeal to Tiglath-pileser for aidrdquosup2sup1 which turned the tide Pekah and Re-

Yamada Royal Inscriptions no 35 iii 5 Cf Manfred Weippert ldquoMenachem von Israel und seineZeitzeugen in einer Steleninschrift des assyrischen Koumlnigs Tiglathpileser III aus dem IranrdquoZDPV 89 (1973) 26ndash53 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 340 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 328 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 328 Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill1992) 6 Tomoo Ishida The Royal Dynasties in Ancient Israel (BerlinNew York de Gruyter 1977) 176 John Bright A History of Israel (London SCM Press 1977 4th revised edition) 272

358 Georg Hentschel

zinrsquos campaign against Ahaz ndash the so-called Syro-Ephraimitic war ndash failed (2Kgs165 Isa 72)

But are the accounts in 2Kgs 16 and Isa 7 reliable Some scholars doubtthat there ever was a Syro-Ephraimitic war because it is ldquoknown only fromthe Biblerdquosup2sup2 To quote Bustenay Oded ldquoWe do not know of a single clear-cut in-disputable example of a war fought against a state in Syria or Palestine becauseit refused to join an anti-Assyrian alliancerdquosup2sup3 ldquoThe causes of such wars were in-ternal and regional not external and internationalrdquosup2⁴ and ldquoThe Syro-Ephraimitewar then originated in an Arameo-Israelite alliance against Judah and its aimwas to dislodge Judah from Transjordaniardquosup2⁵ This hypothesis presupposes thatldquoAzri-Yau of the land of Yaūdirdquo is identical with the Judean king Azariah or Uz-ziah and that one accepts the idea that he ldquobecame sole master of regions thathad previously been under Israelite or joint Judeo-Israelite rule and rapidlymade himself into the strongest political and military force in Palestine andsouthern Syriardquosup2⁶ However the identification of Azri-Yau with Azariah or Uzziahis very dubioussup2⁷

Odedrsquos final objection against the reality of a Syro-Ephraimitic war concernsthe order of events ldquoIf the primary aim of Damascus and Samaria was to form analliance of states against Assyria it is not clear why they should weaken them-selves by a prolonged war against Jerusalem thereby exposing their northernflank to the Assyrian forcesrdquosup2⁸

Was there ever even a chance for Rezin and Pekah to campaign againstJudah and to besiege Jerusalem The biblical text gives the impression thatthe events immediately followed each other very quickly Rezinrsquos and Pekahrsquoscommon campaign against Jerusalem Ahazrsquos call for help and Tiglath-pileserrsquosvictory In reality however Tiglath-pileser took three years to fight against hiswestern enemies The Assyrian inscriptions enable us to reconstruct Tiglath-pi-leserrsquos campaigns in the years 734 733 and 732 BCsup2⁹ At the very latest when Ti-

Roger Tomes ldquoThe Reason for the Syro-Ephraimite Warrdquo JSOT 59 (1993) 55ndash71 esp 61 Bustenay Oded ldquoThe Historical Background of the Syro-Ephraimitic War ReconsideredrdquoCBQ 34 (1972) 153ndash65 esp 154 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 154 cf Tomes ldquoThe Reason for the Syro-Ephraimite Warrdquo70 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 161 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 160 Cf Herbert Donner Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzuumlgen vol 2(Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1995 2nd edition) 335ndash36 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 153 Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaigns in 734ndash732 BC Historical Background ofIsa 7 2 Kgs 15ndash16 and 2 Chr 27ndash28rdquo Bib 87 (2006) 153ndash70


glath-pileser III started his campaigns in 734 BCE Rezin and Pekah had to with-draw from Jerusalem even if Tiglath-pileser went only against Philistia ieagainst the Levantine coast and the centre of resistance of Gaza The Assyrianking did not immediately attack Rezin as the Book of Kings (169) would haveit but instead followed a strategy of encirclement In the next year in 733BCE he conquered Transjordan and fought against Rezin south of Damascushe ldquowon the battle in the field but was unable to capture hellip Damascusrdquosup3⁰ Oneyear later in 732 BCE he occupied the Galilee (2Kgs 1529) and ldquoturned finallyagainst Damascus captured it and executed Rezinrdquo (2Kgs 169)sup3sup1

The events of the Syro-Ephraimitic war reveal the international power struc-turesup3sup2 As Dubovskyacute puts it ldquoPekah deliberately broke off the natural connec-tions with Judah and formed a coalition with Israelrsquos former enemy ndash Aramrdquosup3sup3As Oded stresses ldquoIn this alliance the dominant partner was the Arameanrdquonot-ing that ldquoRezin is always mentioned before Pekah (2Kgs 1537 165 Isa 71 4 5 82Chr 285ndash6)rdquo he therefore argues that Pekah ldquohad gained the throne throughRezinrsquos favour and active supportrdquosup3⁴ Becking is also convinced that ldquoThe drivingforce behind the revolt of Pekah in 736 BCE must have been the Aramaean kingRazyān of Damascusrdquosup3⁵

Pekahrsquos disastrous policy resulted in his downfall Unfortunately we do notknow for sure who overthrew him The inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III leave itopen whether the Assyrian forces or the people of Samaria brought him downHowever according to the Bible it was Hoshea who killed him (2Kgs 1530)

3 Hoshearsquos International Policy and the Timeafter Him

Did Hoshea turn away from the anti-Assyrian policy of his predeceesor PekahAccording to the Assyrian inscriptions Tiglath-pileser appointed Hoshea as

Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo 160 Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo 161 Joachim Begrich ldquoDer Syrisch-Ephraimitische Krieg und seine weltpolitischen Zusam-menhaumlngerdquo ZDMG 83 (1929) 213ndash37 esp 220 challenged the opinion that this war was an iso-lated event expressing his own take on the matter already in the title of his article Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 341 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 163 Becking Fall of Samaria 6

360 Georg Hentschel

king of Israelsup3⁶ He trusted him to pursue a friendly policy towards AssyriaTherefore Israel remained a vassal state and did not become an Assyrian prov-ince unlike Damascus Hoshea paid his first tribute in 731 BCE when Tiglath-pi-leser III was already far away campaigning against the town Sarrabanu in south-ern Babyloniasup3⁷ The Bible however does not present Hoshea as a ruler who wasappointed by the Assyrian overlord Tiglath-pileser According to 2Kgs 1530Hoshea himself formed a conspiracy against Pekah attacked him killed himand usurped the throne As Gershon Galil stresses ldquoConsequently the authorof Kings believed that Hoshea was not an Assyrian vassal at the beginning ofhis reignrdquosup3⁸

Did something change after Tiglath-pileserrsquos death when his son Shalma-neser V came to power during the month of Ṭebet in 727 BCE That is at leastthe impression we get in the framework for Hoshea (2Kgs 173) ldquoShalmaneserking of Assyria marched against him and Hoshea became his vassal and ren-dered him tributerdquoDid Shalmaneser really conduct a campaign against HosheaNadav Narsquoaman is convinced ldquothat v 3 most probably refers to unrest and per-haps even rebellion that broke out in the West upon the death of the great em-peror and the accession of his son Shalmaneser Vrdquosup3⁹ However according to KyleLawson Younger Jr the Assyrian Eponym Chronicles do not mention a campaignagainst the West during the years 728 and 727⁴⁰ Moreover there was not enoughtime for a military clash Shalmaneserrsquos accession year covered only few months(25 Ṭebet ndash Nisan 726) and Shalmaneser remained in his first year ldquoin thelandrdquo⁴sup1 The biblical text in 2Kgs 173 corrects the impression that Hoshea hadbecome an independent king by himself (1530) and emphasises that Hosheawas Shalmaneserrsquos vassal and paid his tribute to the new great emperor⁴sup2

Tadmor Inscriptions Summ 4 15primendash19prime = Tadmor and Yamada Royal Inscriptions no 4215primendash 19prime fragmentary parallel Tadmor Inscriptions Summ 13 17primendash 18prime = Tadmor and YamadaRoyal Inscriptions no 44 17primendash18prime Cf Manfred Weippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testa-ment (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2010) 295 Tadmor Inscriptions Summ 9 rev 9ndash11 = Tadmor and Yamada Royal Inscriptions no 49rev 9ndash 11 Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of Samariardquo CBQ 57(1995) 52ndash64 esp 63 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background of the Fall of Samaria (720 BC)rdquoBib 71 (1990)206ndash25 esp 214 Cf Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61(1999) 461ndash82 esp 464 Cf Lawson Younger ldquoFall of Samariardquo 464 Cf John H Hayes and Jeffrey K Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samaria (730ndash720 BC)rdquo Bib 72(1991) 153ndash81 esp 163 2Kgs 173 involves ldquoa voluntary submission without military encounterrdquo


The next biblical verse (174) makes it clear that this situation did not con-tinue during Shalmaneserrsquos reign At some point the Assyrian king discoveredthat Hoshea had sent messengers to So the king of Egypt⁴sup3 and did no longerpay his tribute Shalmaneser could not tolerate such behaviour How did Hosheaget caught up in this Egypt was at that time a divided country that could nothelp Israel to fight against Assyria⁴⁴ There was no internal or external crisisin Assyria at that time Hoshearsquos decision was a far-reaching political mistake

The biblical author continues with a surprising turn of events (2Kgs 174c d)ldquoThe king of Assyria arrested him and put him in prisonrdquoWhy was it so easy toarrest Hoshea Did he simply obey an order of the Assyrian king⁴⁵ Why didhe not remain behind the walls of his capital city of Samaria⁴⁶ Did he go tothe Assyrian king because he wanted to explain the difficult atmosphere insideSamaria to him Galil supports this interpretation ldquoAt that time Hoshea proba-bly went forth from Samaria to meet the king of Assyria in a last-minute attemptto attain a compromise and prevent the conquest of the Israelite cities and thefall of Samariardquo⁴⁷ But can we trust in the reliability of the biblical narratorHe probably wrote down this detail many years later On the other side wecan compare the fate of Josiah of Judah (2Kgs 2329) whom Pharaoh Necho put todeath ldquoas soon as he had seen himrdquo⁴⁸ Moreover we should bear in mind thatHoshea was perhaps not the driving force in the insurrection against AssyriaHoshearsquos imprisonment did not break the resistance of the Samarians They re-mained stubborn enemies of Assyria even when Sargon II began to rule as weare yet to see Perhaps the people of Samaria had put Hoshea under pressureto send messengers to So in Egypt If we take all this into consideration then

There is a discussion about the name ldquoSordquo Is it the name of a city or the name of a king inEgypt From the use of the preposition לא we can see that So is not a toponym cf Bernd UlrichSchipper ldquoWer war So Koumlnig von AumlgyptenrdquoBN 92 (1998) 71ndash84 esp 74ndash75 The most powerfulrulers at that time were the Nubian leader Piye and Tefnakht a prince on the western side of theDelta But ldquofrom a geographic point of view Osorkonrsquos IVrsquos kingdom was the nearest Delta prin-cipality to the land of Israelrdquo so Pnina Galpaz-Feller ldquoIs That So (2 Kings XVII 4)rdquo RB 107(2000) 338ndash47 esp 344 The historical circumstances point to Osorkon IV argues SchipperldquoWer war Sordquo 82 pointing out that also from a linguistical point of view it is at least possiblethat So is an abbreviation of the name Wsrkn Cf Donner Geschichte des Volkes Israel 345 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 218 Hayes and Kuan ldquoFinal Years of Samariardquo 162 think however that Hoshea had been takenldquoin the course of some military conflictrdquo Galil ldquoLast Years of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 60 Similarly Jeremy Hughes Secrets of theTimes Myth and History in Biblical Chronology (Sheffield JSOT Press 1990) 205ndash206 Hoshealdquoapparently decided to abandon his revolt and went to offer his submission and pay tributerdquo Cf Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 218

362 Georg Hentschel

it is at least possible to assume that Hoshea had wanted to negotiate with theAssyrian king That the latter did not kill Hoshea is perhaps an argument in fa-vour of this interpretation

The Samarians did not install a new king instead of Hoshea⁴⁹ but continuedtheir resistance The Assyrian king invaded the country and besieged Samaria forthree years (2Kgs 175) ldquoIn the ninth year of Hoshea he captured Samariardquo (2Kgs176a cf 18910) But it is doubtful whether the Assyrians needed three years tobesiege Samaria and to capture it The archaeological evidence points against itHerrmann Michael Niemann emphasised ldquothat there are no traces of destructionthat could be attributed to the Assyrians between 724 and 720 BCErdquo⁵⁰ Samariawas not a mighty stronghold ldquoOnly the palace residence was fortified hellip to resistfor example an Aramean razzia or an attack from regional or local rival but thelack of water would not permit a long siegerdquo⁵sup1 As Galil states ldquoThe Assyrianarmy encamped in Samaria was probably of limited scope and the siege maypossibly have turned into a blockaderdquo⁵sup2

Which Assyrian king punished Hoshea and captured Samaria for the firsttime Shalmaneser V or Sargon II The biblical text mentions Shalmaneser justone time (173a) and talks later about the ldquoAssyrian kingrdquo (174a c 5a 6a) I as-sume that it probably was Shalmaneser V as this is in accordance with the Bab-ylonian Chronicle which mentions only one event during Shalmaneserrsquos reignSamaria was taken⁵sup3 While this much is clear the exact meaning of the verbused here ndash iḫtepi (perfect of ḫepucirc) ndash is widely disputed whereas eg NadavNarsquoaman stresses ldquothat other verbs were selected to designate the breaking ofwalls after a siegerdquo⁵⁴ Bob Becking is convinced that the Babylonian Chroniclerefers to an actual capture of Samariardquo⁵⁵ In any case it seems clear that Shalma-neser was able to inflict a substantial defeat on the people of Samaria

We come to the same conclusion if we take the chronological data into ac-count The Assyrian king captured Samaria ldquoin the ninth year of Hosheardquo(176a) That was Hoshearsquos last year on the throne because he reigned no longer

Cf Galil ldquoLast Years of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 60 Herrmann Michael Niemann ldquoRoyal Samaria ndash Capital or Residence or The Foundation ofthe City of Samaria by Sargon IIrdquo in Ahab Agonistes The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty edLester L Grabbe (London TampT Clark 2007) 184ndash207 esp 189 Niemann ldquoRoyal Samariardquo 201 Galil ldquoLast Years of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 60 Babylonian Chronicle 1 i 28 see Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles(Locust Valley NY Augustin 1975) 69ndash87 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 211 Becking Fall of Samaria 25


than nine years (171)When he paid his first tribute to Tiglath-pileser III his firstregnal year had already begun That was probably in the year 731 BCE He startedtherefore his ninth year in 723 BCE Because Shalmaneser V reigned until themonth of Tebet 722 BCE the capture of Samaria must have still fallen into hisreign This result does not change of course if Hoshea had been imprisoned be-fore his ninth year

While no extant Assyrian inscription ascribes the Fall of Samaria to Shal-maneser there are many texts that unanimously testify that Sargon II capturedSamaria and deported its people⁵⁶ However these events belong to another con-text When Sargon II seized power in 722 BCE there was wide resistance andBabylon and Elam rose against Assyria⁵⁷ but he could stop their advances Inhis second year (720 BCE) he fought against a rebellion in the western Assyrianprovinces including Damascus and Samerina (Ass Samaria) centred on Ha-math and headed by Ilu-birsquodi The people of Samaria did not want to face theloss of independence They reacted in a similar way to what they had doneafter Hoshearsquos imprisonment Sargon II defeated the rebellion and also SamariaI take it that the references refer to the conquest of Samaria Sargon II knew thestubborn resistance of Samaria and deported therefore more than 27000 peopleas he claimed in his inscriptions He became the ldquoconqueror of Samaria and thewhole land of Bit-Humriardquo⁵⁸ It is interesting as Gershon Galil has pointed outthat Sargonrsquos inscriptions do not mention Hoshea or any other king of Samaria⁵⁹

4 Conclusions

Did Hoshearsquos predecessors pursue a disastrous foreign policy Dubovskyacute showedthat several causes contributed to the downfall of the Northern Kingdom Themain danger was surely the great power Assyria especially after the enthrone-ment of Tiglath-pileser III (r 745ndash727 BCE) Did Israelrsquos kings respect the greatking Menahem submitted to Assyria at the end of his reign in 738 BCE andpaid a heavy tribute (1519) Because he laid a levy on all men of wealth in Israel(1520) he probably provoked or increased anti-Assyrian feelings among the peo-

All known texts are collected in Frahmrsquos chapter in this volume For a selection in translationcf TUAT I4 379 382ndash83 385ndash87 Bright A History of Israel 278 Threshold Inscription IV 31ndash2 (= Frahmrsquos Text 18) Cf Niemann ldquoRoyal Samariardquo 194 Galil ldquoLast Years of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 55 cites the Nimrud Prism (= Frahmrsquos Text 8)passage regarding Sargonrsquos enemies in Samaria and asks ldquoWhy is there a general referenceto the Samarians without mentioning the name of their king (as was usual)rdquo

364 Georg Hentschel

ple of Israel Therefore it was easier for Pekah to overthrow Pekahiah Mena-hemrsquos son Pekah pursued an anti-Assyrian policy That can be concludedfrom the common campaign against Jerusalem headed by Rezin the Arameanking of Damascus (165 Isa 712) Rezin and Pekah wanted to appoint a newking in Jerusalem (Isa 75) and to enlarge their anti-Assyrian coalition Howeverthe operation failed Pekah lost several towns in the North Galilee and Gilead(1529) and was left with only the small vassal-state Ephraim Pekahrsquos disastrouspolicy resulted in his downfall even though we do not know who overthrew himTiglath-pileser the people of Samaria or his successor Hoshea (cf 1530)

Which foreign policy pursued Hoshea Tiglath-pileser claimed that he ap-pointed Hoshea That suggests that Hoshea wanted to end Pekahrsquos anti-Assyrianpolicy Hoshea paid the tribute ldquoyear by yearrdquo (174) But in the end he sent mes-sengers to an Egyptian ruler perhaps Osorkon IVWhy did he risk such an adven-ture Did the court or the people of Samaria put Hoshea under pressure Whydid he meet with Shalmaneser V who then imprisoned him The people of Sama-ria continued their resistance anyway Samaria was captured for the first time inHoshearsquos ninth year when he did not reign anymore (723 BCE) The anti-Assyrianattitude flared up again when resistence rose in the western provinces of the As-syrian Empire against Sargon II in his second year (720 BCE) Now Israel wentdown because the leadership of Samaria did not recognise the limitations oftheir might and failed to acknowledge the great power of the Assyrians



Martti Nissinen

The Book of Hosea and the Last Daysof the Northern Kingdom

The Methodological Problem

1 How Can We Reach the Eighth Century BCE

The essays published in this volume demonstrate that the historical reconstruc-tion of the last decades of the Kingdom of Israel is a meaningful enterpriseSome significant problems notwithstanding it is possible to base such a recon-struction on a number of biblical and Assyrian textsWhatever took place withinthe Northern Kingdom during the very last years of its existence is a tricky ques-tion however because there are hardly any sources where such knowledgecould be drawn from Nadav Narsquoaman has recently argued that ldquoHosea is theonly available source for discussing the kingdomrsquos internal affairs in the secondhalf of the eighth century BCE hence the great importance of elucidating the po-tential contribution of Hosea for the historical investigationrdquosup1 This statement ofcourse implies a great deal of confidence in the possibility that significant partsof the Book of Hosea actually date to the late eighth century BCE which evident-ly is no longer a matter of course

The question of the dating of not only the Book of Hosea but also of theprophetic books in general has become a serious and manifold methodologicalproblemsup2 How can the eighth century datings or any datings predating the old-

Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Source for the Last Days of the Kingdom of IsraelrdquoBZ 59 (2015) 232ndash56 esp 234 For recent discussion see eg Reinhard G Kratz The Prophets of Israel (Winona Lake INEisenbrauns 2015) id ldquoProbleme der Prophetenforschungrdquo in id Prophetenstudien KleineSchriften II (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2011) 3ndash 17 Brad E Kelle ldquoThe Phenomenon of IsraeliteProphecy in Contemporary Scholarshiprdquo CurBR 12 (2014) 275ndash320 Joumlrg Jeremias ldquoDas Raumltselder Schriftprophetierdquo ZAW 125 (2013) 93ndash 117 David M Carr The Formation of the HebrewBible A New Reconstruction (New York Oxford University Press 2011) 317ndash38 Erhard BlumldquoIsraels Prophetie im altorientalischen Kontext Anmerkungen zu neueren religionsgeschichtli-chen Thesenrdquo in ldquoFrom Ebla to Stellenboschrdquo Syro-Palestinian Religions and the Hebrew Bibleed Izak Cornelius and Louis C Jonker (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2008) 81ndash 115 Hans M Bar-stad ldquoWhat Prophets Do Reflections on Past Reality in the Book of Jeremiahrdquo in Prophecy in theBook of Jeremiah ed Hans M Barstad and Reinhard G Kratz (Berlin de Gruyter 2009) 10ndash32

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-018

est manuscript evidence be methodologically justified Can the eighth centurybe assumed as the date of any part of the Book of Hosea unless the oppositeis proven Can textual growth caused by centuries of transmission be identifiedin the text available to us so that more or less precise dates could be given to thetextual layers thus recognized Or should one rather date the book as a wholemdash and if so to which period of time How can the material in the Book of Hoseabe compared to other sources biblical as well as non-biblical in a historicallyresponsible way The view of the Book of Hosea as a historical document de-pends essentially on the answers given to these methodological questionswhich I attempt to address in this chaptersup3

First of all in my view datings of the Book of Hosea or any prophetic bookshould not be based on default positions preferring the alleged lifetime of theprophet after whom the book is named Every dating must be argued for we can-not date texts for the sake of convenience Any principle of the type ldquoinnocentuntil proven guiltyrdquo should not be applied to texts that are neither accused ofanything nor in need of being defended Therefore the practice of dating Ho-seanic passages routinely to the eighth century without an argument to justifyit is unacceptable This practice may emerge from the often unspoken preferenceof the prophet for the later editors early datings for late datings or textual unityfor disunity⁴ Preferences like this are however difficult to reconcile with thedocumented evidence of textual transmission Drawing historical conclusionsfrom the Book of Hosea (or any other book) on the basis of such default positionsis likely to introduce errors into the historical record

Uwe Becker ldquoDie Wiederentdeckung des Prophetenbuches Tendenzen und Aufgaben der gegen-waumlrtigen Prophetenforschungrdquo BTZ 21 (2004) 30ndash60 Cf my previous musings in eg Martti Nissinen Ancient Prophecy Near Eastern Biblicaland Greek Perspectives (Oxford Oxford University Press 2017) 144ndash67 id ldquoComparing Prophet-ic Sources Principles and a Test Caserdquo in Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel ed JohnDay (London TampT Clark 2010) 3ndash24 id ldquoThe Historical Dilemma of Biblical Prophetic Stud-iesrdquo in Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah ed Hans M Barstad and Reinhard G Kratz (Berlin deGruyter 2009) 103ndash20 For a good representation of this view see Francis I Andersen and David Noel FreedmanHosea A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City NY Doubleday1980) 59 ldquoIn both cases [scil the unity of the Book of Hosea and the integrity of the text]our premise and point of departure are conservative that the book is essentially the work ofa single person and that the text is basically sound These are hardly ringing affirmationsthey are more like defensive desperation If the opposite were true if many hands and voicescould be found from the book then we would have the thankless and ultimately fruitlesstask of apportioning the work among a variety of people whose existence is hypothetical andwhose only distinguishing mark is some obscurity or inconsistency in the textrdquo

370 Martti Nissinen

How could such errors then be avoided At the very least we must be awareof the nature of our source material The oldest ldquohardrdquo evidence of the existenceof the Book of Hosea (like any other book of the Hebrew Bible) comes from theDead Sea Scrolls Parts of the Book of Hosea have been preserved in three scrollsthat is 4QXIIc 4QXIId and 4QXIIg all dating to the first half of the first centuryBCE⁵ This material alone together with the Old Greek translation of the Bookof Hosea which in some cases is arguably translated from a Hebrew text differentfrom the Masoretic text⁶ demonstrates that textual transmission not only pre-served ancient texts but also changed them⁷ We may assume that the textstransmitted in the Scrolls often date back several centuries but the documentedevidence of textual growth makes it impossible to believe that any of the avail-able manuscripts provides us with a text that had remained unchanged for sucha long time⁸ In the case of Hosea the documented changes are usually less thandramatic but they testify to actual scribal interventions to the text that cannot bedismissed either⁹ This is why any dating beyond the age of the extant manu-script material requires a diachronic theory concerning the transmission of thegiven text through a long period of time Creating such a theory however imme-diately raises further methodological questions While extant textual evidenceshows that the idea of textual growth is not based on imagination detectingthe early phases of textual transmission on the basis of the text itself withoutempirical evidence is a matter of ongoing debate

See Brian Webster ldquoChronological Index of the Texts from the Judaean Desertrdquo in The Textsfrom the Judaean Desert Indices and an Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Ser-ies ed Emanuel Tov (Oxford Clarendon Press 2002) 393 397 Taken together these fragmentsinclude the following verses at least partially 16ndash9 21ndash5 13ndash19 22ndash25 31ndash5 41ndash 19 51 638ndash 11 71 12ndash 16 81 91ndash4 9ndash 17 101ndash 14 112ndash5 6ndash 11 121ndash 15 131 3ndash13 15 141 3ndash6 9ndash 10see the convenient translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls material in Martin Abegg Peter Flint andEugene Ulrich The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (New York Harper 1999) 420ndash27 For instance the Greek text of Hos 134 must have been translated from a Vorlagemuch longerthan the MT but similar to 4QXIIg For 4QXIIc see Hanne von Weissenberg ldquoChanging Scripture Scribal Corrections in MS4QXIIcrdquo in Changes in Scripture Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the SecondTemple Period ed Hanne von Weissenberg Juha Pakkala and Marko Marttila (Berlin de Gruyter2011) 247ndash71 For examples of documented evidence of textual growth see Reinhard Muumlller Juha Pakkalaand Bas ter Haar Romeny Evidence of Editing Growth and Change of Texts in the Hebrew Bible(Atlanta GA SBL Press 2014) Cf von Weissenberg ldquoChanging Scripturerdquo 269 ldquoEven the smaller individual scribal addi-tions and corrections in manuscripts illustrate the minor forms of growth in the texts They attestto the scribal contribution to the development of the texts that became the Hebrew Biblerdquo

The Book of Hosea and the Last Days of the Northern Kingdom 371

Diachronic analysis is of course the most traditional way of approachingthe Book of Hosea in academic biblical studies and has been practiced bymany scholars over the last decades myself included Traditionally the dia-chronic enterprise has been motivated by the search of the original messageof the prophet by way of separating later additions from the original text andidentifying the oldest material which is often virtually equated with the wordsonce uttered by the prophet Hosea The ripest fruit carried by this branch ofmethodology can be found in the work of Joumlrg Jeremias according to whomthe essential contents of the Book of Hosea date back to the last years of theNorthern Kingdom and the time immediately following the catastrophe ldquoDasBuch Hosea hat seine entscheidende Praumlgung im untergegangenen Nordreich er-haltenrdquosup1⁰ According to Jeremias the earliest form of the book is essentially thework of his disciples who had collected and interpreted the prophetrsquos wordswhereas the book as we know it was edited and augmented in Judah after thecollapse of the Northern Kingdom A similar line of thought has been followedby many scholarssup1sup1

Another type of diachronic analysis of the Book of Hosea is not concernedwith finding the prophetrsquos message or even the original core of the book but reck-on with a complicated process of redaction andor Fortschreibung over a long pe-riod of timesup1sup2 These studies have typically identified only scattered remains ofmaterial datable to the eighth century BCE shifting the emphasis from theprophet and his disciples to the scribal circles of the monarchic and postmonar-chic periods

Jeremias ldquoDas Raumltsel der Schriftprophetierdquo 113 cf many well-known works of Joumlrg Jeremiaseg Studien zur Theologie des Alten Testaments (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2015 ed FriedhelmHartenstein and Jutta Krispenz) 269ndash87 (= ldquoDie Anfaumlnge der Schriftprophetierdquo 1996) and311ndash25 (= ldquoProphetenwort und Prophetenbuch Zur Rekonstruktion muumlndlicher Verkuumlndungder Prophetenrdquo 1990) Hosea und Amos Studien zu den Anfaumlngen des Dodekapropheton (Tuumlbin-gen Mohr Siebeck 1996) Der Prophet Hosea (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1983) Eg Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Sourcerdquo 255ndash56 dates Hosearsquos prophecies to thetime of Hoshea the last king of Israel and the earliest scroll to the time immediately afterthe Assyrian annexation of the kingdom (720 BCE) Eg Roman Vielhauer Das Werden des Buches Hosea eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Unter-suchung (Berlin de Gruyter 2007) Susanne Rudnig-Zelt Hoseastudien Redaktionskritische Un-tersuchungen zur Genese des Hoseabuches (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2006) HenrikPfeiffer Das Heiligtum von Bethel im Spiegel des Hoseabuches (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ru-precht 1999) Martti Nissinen Prophetie Redaktion und Fortschreibung im Hoseabuch Studienzum Werdegang eines Prophetenbuches im Lichte von Hos 4 und 11 (Kevelaer Butzon amp Berckerand Neukirchen-Vluyn Neukirchener Verlag 1991) Gale A Yee Composition and Redaction inthe Book of Hosea a Redaction Critical Investigation (Atlanta GA Scholars Press 1987) cf Rein-hard G Kratz ldquoDie Redaktion der Prophetenbuumlcherrdquo in id Prophetenstudien 32ndash48

372 Martti Nissinen

Diachronic studies reconstructing the emergence of the Book of Hosea havedone their best to remove the illusionary innocence with regard to the textualtransmission and its relation to historical events Since however no two schol-ars arrive at the same conclusion but the results typically vary from study tostudy many colleagues have found it difficult to decide on whose analysis isthe more reliable one Therefore the possibility of unfolding the process of tex-tual growth with a precision that could reveal even relative datings of each indi-vidual passage in the book has been seriously questioned The ever-changing re-sults of diachronic analyses have been found frustrating enough for manyscholars to abandon them altogether and to read the texts synchronically givingup the attempt to reconstruct the hypothetical phases of textual transmission

Textual growth in prophetic books is not usually denied altogether althoughacknowledging its existence often does not go beyond lip-service Some scholarssay they are reading the ldquofinal formrdquo of the text however there is no such thingas the final form of any biblical book unless modern editions of the Masoretictext are regarded as suchsup1sup3 Of course any given form of the text can form thebasis of an analysis that does not attempt to go historically beyond the textualwitness itself However if we want to relate the Book of Hosea historicallywith the last days of the Northern Kingdom the so-called ldquofinal formrdquo readingsclearly lead to an impasse

A synchronic reading of the Book of Hosea does not as such require an eighth-century BCE setting even though this very often seems to be assumed A synchron-ic analysis can take the text as the product of postmonarchical readerships relat-ing the text of the Book of Hosea to a later historical period when one can supposethe text to have reached more or less the shape known to us from existing textualevidence Thus for instance Ehud Ben Zvi consistently reads the book as theproduct of the literati of the late Persian periodsup1⁴ This way of reading the text nei-ther denies the possibility that some parts of the book indeed have earlier originsnor enables sorting these parts out Historical links can be made to the time chos-en as the setting of the alleged (re‐)readership of the book but historical connec-tions with the events of the eighth century BCE fall entirely out of scope

Cf eg Eugene Ulrich ldquoOur Sharper Focus on the Bible and Theology Thanks to the DeadSea Scrollsrdquo CBQ 66 (2004) 1ndash24 Anneli Aejmelaeus ldquoLicence to Kill Deut 1310 and the Pre-requisites of Textual Criticismrdquo in Verbum et calamus Semitic and Related Studies in Honour ofthe Sixtieth Birthday of Professor Tapani Harviainen ed Hannu Juusola Juha Laulainen andHeikki Palva (Helsinki Finnish Oriental Society 2004) 1ndash22 Ehud Ben Zvi Hosea (FOTL 21 A1 Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 2005) cf James M Bos Re-considering the Date and Provenance of the Book of Hosea The Case of Persia-Period Yehud(LHBOTS 580 London Bloomsbury 2013)


The methodological problem of relating the Book of Hosea to the last days ofthe Northern Kingdom thus consists of the following components

(1) The oldest manuscript evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls is enough todemonstrate that textual development and growth took place however comingfrom the first century BCE it documents only the very latest phases of textualtransmission and does not help to date individual passages of the book toolder periods

(2) There are good grounds to assume that the text of the Book of Hosea ex-isted in some form several centuries earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls The bookis one of the ldquoTwelve Prophetsrdquo already in the oldest textual witnesses but onecan assume that the books included in this collection existed as individual scrollsbefore they were joined together in several phases and that each phase of trans-mission is likely to have transformed the textsup1⁵ However the late date of the ear-liest textual witnesses makes it impossible simply to equate the extant textual evi-dence with any earlier form of the text The Book of Hosea as we know it is alreadypart of a larger composition and the product of a long chain of textual transmis-sion but no documented evidence is available to help with the reconstruction ofthis process This is essentially due to the tendency of the texts themselves to hiderather than to reveal their editorial historysup1⁶

(3) If we want to establish a direct historical connection from the Book ofHosea to the last days of the Northern Kingdom we should be able to date atleast some parts of Hosea to this period of time Diachronic studies detectingthe oldest parts of the Book of Hosea have yielded exact results but thesehave been varying enough to raise suspicions about the viability of even the di-achronic methodology The ever-changing results of ever-greater precision havebeen seen as pointing towards problems in the method itself But the task cannot

For theories concerning the history of redaction of the ldquoBook of the Twelverdquo see eg JakobWoumlhrle Die fruumlhen Sammlungen des Zwoumllfprophetenbuches Entstehung und Komposition (Berlinde Gruyter 2006) Aaron Schart Die Entstehung des Zwoumllfprophetenbuches Neubearbeitungenvon Amos im Rahmen schriftenuumlbergreifender Redaktionsprozesse (Berlin de Gruyter 1998)James D Nogalski Literary Precursors to the Book of the Twelve (Berlin de Gruyter 1993) cfBen Zvi who finds it impossible to reconstruct redactional processes from the existing textFor two different views of the ldquoTwelve Hypothesisrdquo see Ehud Ben Zvi and James D NogalskiTwo Sides of a Coin Juxtaposing Views on Interpreting the Book of the TwelveThe Twelve Prophet-ic Books (with an introduction by Thomas Roumlmer Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press 2009) According to Ehud Ben Zvi ldquothe ongoing process of redaction was not bent on promoting orarchiving and analyzing itself instead its function was to shape a series of texts in which thelast if successful was meant to supersede and erase the memory of the previous onerdquo (ldquoIsthe Twelve Hypothesis Likely from an Ancient Readerrsquos Perspectiverdquo in Ben Zvi and NogalskiTwo Sides of a Coin 46ndash96 esp 59)

374 Martti Nissinen

be fulfilled by way of synchronic reading either unless the book as a whole isdated to the 730sndash720s which is not viable for reasons just mentioned

So have we ended up in a cul-de-sac if synchronic analysis is not the way togo and the results of diachronic studies are found to be disappointing what elsecan we do other than give up entirely on the task of connecting the Book ofHosea with the last days of the Kingdom of Israel Or is there a historically re-sponsible way of doing this

2 Historical Echoes from the Eighth Century

Perhaps we could try circumventing the problems of diachronic methodology byway of looking for clues in the text that seem to point towards an eighth-centurydate and if possible comparing such clues with the available historical data ofthe last days of the kingdom of Israel If they seem to fit this documentary envi-ronment they could be dated to the same period of time The best candidates foran early date would be passages that do not show clear signs of intertextual in-fluence and are not to be taken as Fortschreibung of earlier texts but rather asbelonging to the source materials of an early collection upon which the Bookof Hosea has grown

As many contributions to this volume demonstrate the fall of Samaria andthe subsequent de- and repopulations of the area can indeed be confirmed byAssyrian sources and even by archaeological evidencesup1⁷ The problem is ratherhow to reconstruct the internal affairs of the kingdom of Israel of which thereis no documentation outside of or even within the Hebrew Bible The followingthree examples may illustrate the case

(1) A contemporary reflection of a disturbing political event could perhaps befound in Hos 73ndash7 a highly enigmatic passage that seems to reflect on the murder

For archaeological evidence of the devastation see Zvi Gal Lower Galilee during the Iron Age(Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 1992) 108ndash 109 Cf Avraham Faust ldquoSettlement Economy andDemography under Assyrian Rule in the West The Territories of the Former Kingdom of Israel asa Test Caserdquo JAOS 135 (2015) 765ndash89 who concludes that the Assyrians ldquodid not really careabout the fate of the areas they conquered They carried off whatever they could and their invest-ment was minimalrdquo (782) However the Assyrians did not just plunder but also for examplelooked after the water supply in Samaria as reported in a letter from the time of Sargon IISimo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part I Letters from Assyria and the West (Helsin-ki Helsinki University Press 1987) no 255 According to Angelika Berlejung ldquoThe Assyrians inthe West Assyrianization Colonialism Indifference or Developmental Policyrdquo in Congress Vol-ume Helsinki 2010 ed Martti Nissinen (Leiden Brill 2012) 21ndash60 esp 48) ldquo[s]uccess was max-imal profit with minimal investmentrdquo


of a king perhaps one of the successors of Jeroboam II Of the last kings of Israelonly Menahem is said to have died peacefully whereas his predecessors Zechariahand Shallum as well as his followers Pekahiah and Pekah were killed A rather la-conic report of the four coups drsquoeacutetat that took place after Jeroboam II can be foundin 2Kgs 158ndash31 a passage probably based on court chronicles that were used assources of the Deuteronomistic Historysup1⁸ Hos 73ndash7 seems to give a metaphoricaccount of the day when one of the kings was murdered The actors ldquomakegladrdquo (73) the unsuspecting king and his officials who get drunk presumablyin the privacy of the royal palace They become easy prey for the murdererswho compared with a heated oven just wait ldquofrom the kneading of the doughuntil it is leavenedrdquo that is for the opportunity to ldquodevour their rulersrdquo (77) Com-pared to the account of 2Kgs such an event could best be identified with the mur-der of Pekahiah committed by his captain (šālicircš) Pekah who conspired againsthim with fifty Gileadites and attacked him in the citadel of the palace (2Kgs1525)sup1⁹ This is what I argued in my masterrsquos thesis in 1984 and I would stilllike to agree with myself The passage is probably neither interpreting a pre-exist-ing text in the Book of Hosea nor is it dependent on another biblical text outsidethe book hence it could belong to the material from which the early version of thebook is composedsup2⁰ However I have to admit that the link between Hos 73ndash7 andPekahiahrsquos murder derives from what is visible through the keyhole provided by2Kgs 1525 The two sources seem to connect nicely but the connection dependsentirely on what we happen to see

(2) Further echoes from the last days of the Northern Kingdom either con-temporary or slightly later can be heard in passages of the Book of Hoseathat reflect the Fall of Samaria The demise of the Northern Kingdom or Ephraim(the name may refer to the truncated kingdom in the time of the last king Hosh-easup2sup1) is reflected in several passages that sound like fragments of laments(910ndash 17 111ndash5) Some passages in the Book of Hosea could be imagined to

For court chronicles as the sources of the Deuteronomistic history see Lester L Grabbe 1 amp 2Kings An Introduction and Study Guide History and Story in Ancient Israel (London Bloomsbury2017) 21ndash28 cf eg Ernst Wuumlrthwein Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige 1 Koumln 17ndash2 Koumln 25 (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1984) 376ndash84 Pekahiah has not been among the prime suspects in this murder case see however AndrewAlexander Macintosh A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (Edinburgh TampT Clark1997) 256 Cf Vielhauer Das Werden des Buches Hosea 86ndash92 according to whom verses 75ndash6 goback to oral words of northern origin and the remaining verses to the oldest written layer(erste Verschriftung) Rudnig-Zelt Hoseastudien 212ndash30 sees a pre-exilic core in the passage(verses 74b 5b) however without a reference to the murder of a king Thus Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Sourcerdquo 238ndash39

376 Martti Nissinen

go back to contemporary laments for instance Hos 105ndash8 could be based onsomething like the followingsup2sup2

l [lsquoglwt byt rsquown] For [the calf of Beth-Awensup2sup3]ygwrw škn šmrwn the inhabitants of Samaria tremble

ky rsquobl lsquolyw lsquomw Its people mourn for itwkmryw lsquolyw ygylw its priests wail over it[lsquol kbwdw ky glh mmnw] [over its glory that has departed from itsup2⁴]

gm rsquowtw lrsquošwr ywbl The thing itself is carried to Assyriamnḥh lmlky rb as tribute to the Great Kingsup2⁵

bšnh rsquoprym yqḥ Ephraim has received shamewybwš yśrrsquol mlsquoṣtw and Israel is ashamed for his own counsel

ndmh šmrwn mlkh Samaria and its king perishkqṣp lsquol pny mym like a splinter on the face of the waters

[wnšmdw bmwt rsquown ḥṭrsquot yśrrsquol [The high places of Awen the sin of Israel shall bedestroyed

qwṣ wdrdr ylsquolh lsquol mzbḥwtm] Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars]sup2⁶

wrsquomrw lhrym kswnw They shall say to the mountains ldquoCover usrdquowlgblsquowt nplw lsquolynw and to the hills ldquoFall on usrdquo

This reconstruction is based on my analysis in Nissinen Prophetie Redaktion und Fortschrei-bung 309ndash 12 cf the different reconstructions of Pfeiffer Das Heiligtum von Bethel 103ndash 17Viel-hauer Das Werden des Hoseabuches 165ndash72 Melanie Koumlhlmoos Bet-El ndash Erinnerungen an eineStadt Perspektiven der alttestamentlichen Bet-El-Uumlberlieferung (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2007)126ndash31 The peculiar and pejorative expression lsquoeglocirct Becirct-āwen (pl fem) is probably inspired by theDeuteronomistic polemics against the calf of Bethel replacing the original name of the object towhich the sg masc suffixes in the following bicolon refer This sentence probably serves as a secondary explanation of the masculine suffix in lsquoālacircwldquofor itover itrdquo which is not applicable to lsquoeglocirct Adopting the usual reading malkicirc rāb instead of melek yāreb (MT) Verse 8a reads like a later prosaic theological interpretation of the original lament


This passage may originally refer to the transportation of a precious item pre-sumably a divine statue to Assyriasup2⁷ It resonates well with the Nimrud Prismof Sargon II which reads ldquo[The inhabitants of Sa]maria who agreed [and plot-ted] with a king [hostile to] me not to endure servitude and not to bring tributeto Assur and who did battle I fought against them with the power of great godsmy lords I counted as spoil 27280 people together with their chariots and godsin which they trustedrdquo (lines iv 25ndash32)sup2⁸ One could easily imagine laments likethe one possibly quoted in Hos 105ndash8 to have been uttered after the fall of Sa-maria if not by prophets then perhaps by professional lamenters similarly to theones known from Assyrian recordssup2⁹

Prophecy and lament are related performances both in the Hebrew Bible andin the ancient Near Eastern sourcessup3⁰ and the literary reflection of the fate of thecity of Samaria and the Kingdom of Israel may have been inspired by source textsrepresenting both genres The Mesopotamian kalucircrsquos were not only singers butalso scribes who wrote divinatory textssup3sup1 If this was true also in Samaria(which can only be speculated) this could explain the early textualization ofsuch laments Laments like Hos 105ndash8 could have belonged to the materialcomprising the first beginnings of what we know as the Book of Hoseasup3sup2 Thelater redactors have subsequently used this material as a tool of criticism against

Cf Koumlhlmoos Bet-El 135ndash38 See C J Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954) 173ndash201esp 179ndash80 For other texts of Sargon II related to the conquest of Samaria see the chapterof Frahm in this volume However the assumed reference to Samarian lamenters in a text from Calah ndash read as 3ŠUacuteMEŠ KURSa-mir-na-a-a by Stephanie Dalley and J N Postgate The Tablets from Fort Shal-maneser (London British School of Archaeology in Iraq 1984) no 121 6 and assuming thatŠUacute was used as a logogram for kalucirc interpreted as a reference to ldquothree Samarian lamenta-tion-priestsrdquo by Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Deportations of the Israelitesrdquo JBL 117 (1998)221 ndash cannot be used as evidence for the existence of Samarian lamenters as the passageneeds to be read 3ndashšuacuteMEŠ KURSa-mir-na-a-a meaning ldquoThird Men (of a chariot crew) from Sa-mariardquo (pers comm Karen Radner) cf also Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume Cf Martti Nissinen ldquoBiblical Prophecy from a Near Eastern Perspective The Cases of DivineKingship and Divine Possessionrdquo in Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007 ed Andreacute Lemaire (Lei-den Brill 2010) 441ndash68 esp 458ndash61 See eg Francesca Rochberg In the Path of the Moon Babylonian Celestial Divination andIts Legacy (Studies in Ancient Magic and Divination 6 Leiden Brill 2010) 247 I am thus suggesting an earlier date to this passage than Vielhauer Das Werden des BuchesHosea 176ndash77 227ndash78 according to whom already the basic layer of Hos 101ndash8 is Deuterono-mistic This is probably true for the Kultpolemik in chapter 10 in general but not necessarily forthe source material used by the editors

378 Martti Nissinen

past andor contemporary religious practices referred to with the pejorative des-ignation designation rsquoāwen (ldquoiniquityrdquo)

(3) My third example is the possible reference to the so-called Syro-Ephrai-mite war in 734ndash732 BCE This war can be reconstructed from biblical texts only(2Kgs 165 2Chr 285ndash8 Isa 71ndash9) but if it actually took place as scholars usu-ally assume it may be interpreted as an act of hostility towards Ahaz the king ofJudah who refused to join the anti-Assyrian alliancesup3sup3 A contemporary echo of itis usually heard in Hos 58ndash 14sup3⁴ The alarm blown in three cities from south tonorth Gibeah Ramah and Beth-Awen (scil Bethel) (58) as well as the accusa-tion of the princes of Judah acting ldquolike those who remove the landmarkrdquo (510)give the impression of a Judahite attack to the area of the Kingdom of Israel andrefer to Ephraimrsquos resorting to the help of Assyria (513) Nothing of this is knownfrom other sources which rather present the Northern Kingdom as attackingJudah and this is exactly the reason why it could be interpreted as a referenceto historical events rather than as interpretation or Fortschreibung of an alreadyexisting text Hence the text could be interpreted as referring to events of theSyro-Ephraimite war unknown from other sources such as the attack of Judahon Israel and Israelrsquos turning to Assyria for help The passage is now embeddedand reworked in the context of the Book of Hosea but the old oracle could orig-inate from either Israel or Judah

Of course the passage can be interpreted otherwise Narsquoaman for exampledates the counter-attack of Judah to the time of Hoshea the last king of Israelwhen Israel was at its weakestsup3⁵ Ben Zvi on the other hand does not see a com-pelling reason to connect the passage with the historical circumstances of thelast days of the kingdom of Israel ldquoThe text as it stands does not lead to such

See eg Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoLet Other Kingdoms Struggle with the Great Powers mdash YouJudah Pay the Tribute and Hope for the Best The Foreign Policy of the Kings of Judah in theNinthndashEighth Centuries BCErdquo in Isaiahrsquos Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Re-lations Swords into Plowshares ed Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook (New York Pal-grave MacMillan 2008) 55ndash73 esp 62ndash64 Thus the majority of scholars following Albrecht Alt ldquoHosea 58ndash66 ein Krieg und seineFolgen in prophetischer Beleuchtungrdquo NKZ 30 (1919) 537ndash68 repr in id Kleine Schriften zurGeschichte des Volkes Israel vol 2 (Munich Beck 1953) 163ndash87 Even Vielhauer Das Werdendes Buches Hosea 225ndash26 finds remnants of oral proclamation from the last days of the North-ern Kingdom in verses 58ndash 11 whereas the written text in verses 58ndash 14 belongs to the late 8thcentury layer (erste Ergaumlnzungsschicht) written from the perspective of Judah Rudnig-Zelt Ho-seastudien 157ndash77 reconstructs a complicated editorial process dating the polemics against Sa-maria to its latest phases Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Sourcerdquo 239ndash40


a readingrdquo which is also unknown to ancient readerships who knew about theSyro-Ephraimite war on the basis of biblical textssup3⁶

Ben Zvi is right in stressing that the reconstructions of the historical scenerybehind passages in the Book of Hosea are based on the assumption that the textsdirectly reflect the historical prophetrsquos oral speeches and should therefore begiven a historical setting within his lifetime ldquoGiven that there are only a limitednumber of political events during that period that are known and potentially rel-evant the only question is which one would fit better a particular speechrdquosup3⁷ Thiseasily leads to a chain of circular arguments causing erroneous historical con-clusions On the other hand if one follows the principal that when writing his-tory all potential sources should be considered and nothing should be ruled outa priori even secondary sources such as prophetic books deserve to be criticallyscrutinizedsup3⁸ Therefore the possibility that a given passage in the Book of Hoseaactually provides a keyhole view into the historical landscape however narrowshould not be dismissed at the outset even though the secondary nature of theevidence should never be forgotten Individual passages of the Book of Hoseamay contain reminiscences of real historical events but they always appear re-contextualized in literary settings created by scribes who may or may not havebeen aware of the actual historical reference

Many other texts in the Book of Hosea most recently collected by Narsquoamansup3⁹could be highlighted to demonstrate the original connection of the text with thefall of Samaria and the last days of the Kingdom of Israel The problem withusing such clues as evidence of events that took place in the 730sndash720s BCEis that however nicely they seem to fit our picture of that period of timethere is always the risk of potest ergo and circular reasoning For examplethe recurrent juxtaposing of Egypt and Assyria (Hos 711 93 115 11 121) un-doubtedly makes sense with regard to the political maneuvers of Hoshea thelast king of Israelmdashprovided that they actually took place and 2Kgs 173bndash5ais not later historical speculation as suggested by Christoph Levin elsewherein this volume The problem is evidently that the parallelism of Egypt and As-syria could be used by any subsequent writer reflecting on the event For laterreaders the names can stand for Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria⁴⁰ Even Sa-

Ben Zvi Hosea 140 Ben Zvi Hosea 141 See Lester L Grabbe Ancient Israel What Do We Know and How Do We Know It (LondonTampT Clark 2007) 35ndash36 Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Sourcerdquo passim Cf Christoph Levin The Old Testament A Brief Introduction (Princeton NJ Princeton Univer-sity Press 2005) 133 with regard to Hos 78ndash 11

380 Martti Nissinen

maria was still there providing itself continually as a target for theological criti-cism for circles who considered that the wrong kind of Yahwism was practiced inthe north⁴sup1 Thereforemdashand this is generally the problem with the dating of indi-vidual passages in Hoseamdasheven if an eighth-century setting makes sense it can-not automatically be preferred

3 Evidence or Reflection of Eighth-CenturyEvents

I am convinced that the beginnings of the Book of Hosea must be sought fromthe last days of the Northern Kingdom or shortly thereafter It is virtually impos-sible to imagine the emergence of the Book of Hosea without the contemporaryexperiences of the end of the Northern Kingdom The fall of Samaria must beconsidered the decisive event that triggered the emergence of the book in what-ever way this happened over the subsequent centuries It is usually assumed thatthe redaction and transmission of the book took place in Judah not only becauseof the multiple mentions of Judah which are often ascribed to a specific redac-tion but also because of the harsh criticism of Israel Ephraim and Samariathroughout the book⁴sup2 However this criticism does not need to derive fromthe eighth century only since as Christoph Levin has argued there was enoughreason for it even later when the Samari(t)an society and worship gradually be-came an issue to the (religious) elite of Jerusalem⁴sup3 The echoes on the last daysof the Northern Kingdom in what may have constituted the earliest form of theBook of Hosea were readily available for interpretations of the subsequent gen-erations who likewise reflected their relationship with what took place in theNorthern Kingdom

It is thus problematic to quote verses of the Book of Hosea as quasi-eyewit-ness reports of events that took place in the 730sndash720s BCE even if we havegood grounds to assume that some material in the book indeed dates back tothis historical period Some passages in Hosea like the ones discussed above

As Gary N Knoppers Jews and Samaritans The Origins and History of Their Early Relations(Oxford Oxford University Press 2013) emphasizes there was no absolute breakdown of rela-tions between Yehud and Samaria in the first centuries BCE but rather a considerable culturaland religious overlap The debate on the common heritage and religious identity is evidence ofthe overlap and continuity not of the breakdown See eg Jeremias Der Prophet Hosea 18ndash 19 and passim Levin The Old Testament 129ndash33 cf the late ldquoSamariapolemikrdquo reconstructed by Rudnig-Zelt Hoseastudien 271ndash73


undeniably give the impression of contemporary experience indeed makingsense when compared to what we know about the last days of the Kingdom ofIsrael from other sources However even these passages rarely reveal historicaldata that could not even theoretically go back to later reflection Potest we cansay quite often but we should be careful with the ergo

Without suggesting anything that has not been said and done before Iwould like to argue that if any part of the Book of Hosea actually derives froma time not too distant from the last days of the kingdom of Israel (and I do be-lieve this to be the case to some extent) such passages can only be identified byway of the diachronic method and comparative analysis Individual parts of theBook of Hosea should not be dated randomly but the dating of each passageshould be based on a well-argued theory concerning the emergence growthand transmission of the text of the Book of Hosea The methodological problemis how to sort datable passages out from a text that is the product of a process oflong textual transmission and if there is a great deal of uncertainty about thisone should be cautious about making precise contemporary connections be-tween the last days of the Kingdom of Israel and the literary work we call theBook of Hosea This is why it is so difficult to detect independent historical in-formation in the Book of Hosea that could be reliably used as evidence of thelast days of the Northern Kingdom Even texts that seem to connect well with his-torical circumstances known from other sources may go back to subsequent re-flection and Fortschreibung

However the book can be used as a powerful document of the reflection andinterpretation of this historical event The event itself is real The fall of the North-ern Kingdom and its capital Samaria is something that can be historically recon-structed from the available sources It would be nonsensical to deny the connec-tion of the Book of Hosea with this event but the nature of the connection isevidently more complicated than a simple contemporary eyewitness responseThe book and the historical event are rather linked through social memorywhich creates an indirect connection between the text and the shared past mdashnot only through remembering but also by way of forgetting⁴⁴

Cf Ehud Ben Zvi ldquoRemembering Hosea The Prophet Hosea as a Site of Memory in the Per-sian Period Yehudrdquo in Poets Prophets and Texts in Play Studies in Biblical Poetry and Prophecyin Honour of Francis Landy ed Ehud Ben Zvi Claudia V Camp David M Gunn and Aaron WHughes (London T amp T Clark 2015) 37ndash57 For social memory and the collective past see alsoGeoffrey Cubitt History and Memory (Manchester Manchester University Press 2007) 199ndash249

382 Martti Nissinen

H G M Williamson

Isaiah and the Fall of the Kingdom of Israel

Isaiah of Jerusalem lived during the closing decades of the existence of theneighbouring Kingdom of Israel and for some twenty years at least thereafterAlthough he refers on a number of occasions to what Biblical scholars label ldquoTheNorthern Kingdomrdquo his references tend to be concentrated on events a decadeor so before the final fall of Samaria His allusions to the latter are generally ob-lique using the fate of Samaria as a warning of the danger in which the southernJudah and Jerusalem stand if they continue with their present policies and life-style

In terms of political history with which this volume is chiefly concerned it istherefore clear that our harvest from Isaiah will be meagre In addition to thathowever I shall in this paper try also to outline some of the ideological implica-tions that follow from the fall of Samaria In terms of the history of religion andthe language that gives expression to it we may find that Isaiah both as histor-ical prophet and as book has much to contribute

It should come as no surprise if I stress finally by way of introduction that byalmost universal consent only a modest amount of what is found in the book ofIsaiah actually derives straight from the eighth century From chapter 40 on-wards despite many references to Jacob and Israel all the material was writtenin the sixth and later centuries of course Equally all agree that a good deal inchapters 1ndash39 also comes from the time after Isaiah himself but exactly what ismore controversial In a historical study such as the present one that is obvious-ly a matter for concern and I shall have space to make only a few remarks tojustify the positions I adopt What it is important to bear in mind however isthat while I am undertaking a severely diachronic analysis that does not meanthat we should simply discard the later material Rather we should value it high-ly as first-hand evidence of the later reception of material that may have appliedoriginally to Israel and Samaria That reception from earliest days on is impor-tant evidence of the great impact on the development of subsequent thought thatIsaiah had

I want to begin with terminology and specifically with the ways in whichIsaiah labelled the Northern Kingdom The so-called refrain poem in 97ndash20makes for a good starting point In chapter 9 we have three stanzas each closedby an almost identical refrain in verses 11 16 and 20 The same form of wordingrecurs in 525with the following verses 526ndash29 apparently comprising the final

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-019

stanza of the poemsup1 This final stanza tells of the advance of an unnamed butinvincible enemy who we may presume is Godrsquos final agent of judgment forthe various sins enumerated in the preceding stanzas It is likely that the occur-rence of the refrain in 525 marks the end therefore of the original fourth stanzaonly two lines of which have been preserved in 525a I refer to my discussionselsewhere to explain how and why this dislocation may have taken placesup2

Once a few obvious minor later expansions (such as 914) have been paren-thesised the four complete stanzas which now remain are of remarkably similarlength and poetic shape though we should probably not use this to force theminto exact conformity with each other as Gray was tempted to dosup3 This raises aninteresting point with regard to the first stanza in verses 7ndash 11 MT has six and ahalf lines which certainly seems unlikely There has probably been some severedamage to the text of verse 8 as I argue at length in the textual notes to my forth-coming commentary so that the length of the present text of the stanza shouldnot deflect us from construing verse 7 as an independent heading to the wholepoem That it is so is demanded by the observation that this is the only stanzawhich has a generalised introduction ldquoThe Lord has sent a word againstJacob and it will fall upon Israelrdquo In addition the titles of those addressedare immediately changed in verse 8 where the specific indictment beginsldquoBut all the people did evil Ephraim and the residents of Samariardquo Verse 8therefore clearly refers to the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom and thatwill then account also for the use of the name Israel in v 11 following

In verse 7 however which on this view introduces the whole of the poemwefind that those addressed are ldquoJacob and hellip Israelrdquo Although most of the rest ofthe poem is most easily construed with reference to the Northern Kingdom (the

The tenses used support this view since they are generally indicative of the past in 97ndash20 butthey shift to a future orientation in 526ndash29 (predominantly either imperfect or waw + perfect) See Hugh G MWilliamson A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1ndash27 vol 1 Isaiah1ndash5 (London TampT Clark 2006) 400ndash403 together with the relevant passage in the forthcomingvolume 2 see also id ldquoCommenting on the Unknown Reflections on Isaiah 97ndash20rdquo in TheGenre of Biblical Commentary Essays in Honor of John E Hartley on the Occasion of his 75th Birth-day ed Timothy D Finlay and William Yarchin (Eugene OR Pickwick 2015) 184ndash95 Againstthe inclusion of 101ndash4 in this poem despite the recurrence of the refrain at 104b see HughG M Williamson ldquolsquoAn Initial Problemrsquo The Setting and Purpose of Isaiah 101ndash4rdquo in TheBook of Isaiah Enduring Questions Answered Anew Essays Honoring Joseph Blenkinsopp andHis Contribution to the Study of Isaiah ed Richard J Bautch and J Todd Hibbard (Grand RapidsMI Eerdmans 2014) 11ndash20 G Buchanan Gray A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Isaiah I-XXVII (Edin-burgh TampT Clark 1912) 177 see too more recently Herbert Donner Israel unter den Voumllkern (Lei-den Brill 1964) 66ndash69

384 H G M Williamson

reference to Ephraim and Manasseh in verse 20 is only the most obvious indica-tion of this) Judah is also included (again see verse 20 for a direct mention⁴) Itis therefore probable that the names in verse 7 are not synonymous with those inverse 8 as many commentators have assumed⁵ but rather that Israel and Jacobare used to cover a wider audience including both kingdoms

Because as we shall see later this is a matter of considerable historical im-portance it will be worthwhile to see if this kind of distinction in terminology isa consistent feature of Isaiahrsquos own sayings or whether our poem is an exceptionto some other rule

A superficial survey indicates that elsewhere too Isaiah referred to the North-ern Kingdom in comparable terms In 81ndash4 which is part of Isaiahrsquos own first-person commentary on the so-called Syro-Ephraimite crisis of 734ndash732 BCE thecoalition partners are referred to as Samaria and Damascus (v 4) and the threatagainst them is again explicitly Assyria

Similarly there is a longer account of this same crisis in chapter 7 This istold in the third person and cannot derive directly from Isaiah but reaches usas with the comparable narratives in chapters 20 and 36ndash39 from some sepa-rate Deuteronomistically-inspired narrator He had access to reasonable histor-ical memory however as the other passages just mentioned clearly indicate sothat we need not doubt that he incorporated a fair substance of Isaiahrsquos ownwords Here in the introduction in verse 1 which has a close parallel in 2Kgs165 Pekah is identified as king of Israel This is standard terminology in the his-

Ronald E Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans and London Marshall Morganamp Scott 1980) 69 proposes that this clause should be regarded as ldquoa redactorrsquos addition whohas sought to bring out more forcefully that the final defeat of the Northern Kingdom arose be-cause the people there refused to reunite with Judah and accept the Davidic monarchyrdquo In hisview the original prophecy concerned only the Northern Kingdom in its final decade In view ofthe familiarity with this kind of Judean gloss in Hosea it is perhaps surprising that this sug-gestion has not been more widely adopted The reason is presumably that it is not so certainas Clements maintains that the poem originally referred exclusively to the Northern Kingdomand also that as a Judean author Isaiah would himself no doubt have had an interest in theeffect of his observations on his own nation In my opinion the first colon of the versewould on its own have been a curiously weak poetic ending to the stanza The poetic shapeof the passage certainly favours retaining the phrase here See for instance Karl Marti Das Buch Jesaja (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 1900) 96 John Skin-ner The Book of the Prophet Isaiah Chapters i-xxxix (Cambridge Cambridge University Press1897) 78 Gray Isaiah 1ndashXXVII 183 Jesper Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaja eine Untersu-chung zur biblischen Theologie (Leiden Brill 1988) 8 J J M Roberts First Isaiah A Commentary(Minneapolis MI Fortress 2015) 160 more cautiously Hans Wildberger Jesaja 1ndash 12 (Neukirch-en-Vluyn Neukirchener Verlag 1980 2nd edition) 214 = id Isaiah 1ndash 12 a Commentary transThomas H Trapp (Minneapolis MI Fortress 1991) 230

Isaiah and the Fall of the Kingdom of Israel 385

torical books and we need not doubt that the wording derives from that samecircle It will not directly reflect Isaiahrsquos own preferred terminology When weget into the narrative proper immediately following however we find that theNorthern Kingdom is referred to rather as Ephraim (vv 2 5 9 17) with Samariaas its ldquoheadrdquo (v 9) This therefore exactly parallels the use in 97

The same terminology appears in 1113 ldquoThen the jealousy towards Ephraimwill depart and those who are hostile to Judah will be cut off Ephraim will notenvy Judah and Judah will not show hostility towards Ephraimrdquo This verse ap-pears in a passage whose introduction and conclusion in verses 11ndash 12 and 15ndash16show conclusively that it cannot be earlier than the exilic period Indeed thelinks between these verses and parts of chapters 40ndash55 are striking There arereasons to question the original internal unity of this passage however⁶ Firstverse 11 (with which 12 is joined by content) and verses 15ndash16 are more prosaicthan the verses which they enclose This kind of distinction is admittedly not asclear cut as we might wish in the modern world and there are undoubtedly gra-dations of style in classical Hebrew where the boundaries between poetry andprose are blurred I do not however take the extreme view that claims that itis a mistake to use the term poetry at all Whatever labels we use howeverthe use of prose particles lack of parallelism the use of a long list of placenames and uneven line length combine to indicate that there is a differenceof style between the two sections I have mentioned and the remainder of the pas-sage

Second the first and last parts of the passage are closely associated themati-cally with each other They concentrate on the regathering of those in the dia-spora and as already mentioned they come very close to some of the themesand forms of expression that we find in Isaiah 40ndash55 The middle section bycontrast speaks of the reunion of the sharply opposed factions within theland and of their military triumphs over the traditional enemies of Israel andJudah (a theme incidentally in which Isaiah 40ndash55 shows no interest whatso-ever)While it is possible imaginatively to join these two very different topics thepassage itself does not furnish any such join⁷ and the fact that it returns at theend to the theme with which it began tends to highlight the difference

The following discussion represents a revision of the position that I argued in Hugh G MWil-liamson The Book Called Isaiah Deutero-Isaiahrsquos Role in Composition and Redaction (OxfordClarendon 1994) 125ndash41 where I treated the passage as a unity including verses 13ndash 14I now agree with those who have been critical of the way I handled those two verses For fullerdetails on the points summarised here see my forthcoming commentary on Isaiah 6ndash 12 Cf Bernhard Duhm Das Buch Jesaia (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1892 4th edition1922) 109 ldquo13 und 14 schieben sich ungeschickt zwischen v 11 f und v 15 f einrdquo


The most plausible trigger for verses 13ndash 14 is the refrain poem in chapter 9There too we read of enmity between Ephraim and Judah (920) and there toothe ldquoPhilistines in the westrdquo and ldquoAram in the eastrdquo are depicted as the arche-typical enemies of Israel (911) Our two verses seem to represent an idealised re-versal of the bad situation which was depicted in that poem It may therefore besuggested that these two verses were developed independently as some sort ofresponsive expansion of that longer poem and that this was later picked upby the author of our passage Whether by Isaiah or a later close imitator theuse of the name Ephraim again fits the pattern we have been tracing

With chapter 17 we get back on to slightly firmer ground This is one of thelong selections of ldquoOracles Against the Nationsrdquo in chapters 13ndash23 and againthere are differences of opinion as to which may be from Isaiah himself andequally which parts of even early oracles may have been added later Chapter 17is an oracle concerning Damascus and it seems to predict her downfall Giventhat this is known to have happened in 732 BCE many commentators favourthe view that the chapter at least contains some very early material Thiswhole debate has recently been well summarised by Paul M Cook and in myopinion he then advances a very convincing argument based on the differentways in which the otherwise similar titles to each oracle are used for isolatingfour of them as being among the material assembled at the earliest stage in thedevelopment of the book These are the oracles about Philistia (1428ndash32) Moab(chapters 15ndash 16) Damascus (chapter 17) and Egypt (chapter 19)⁸ While ourchapter 17 has undoubtedly gone through some stages of later expansion verses1b and the first part of 3 at least seem to belong together as part of the primarylayer as agreed by even the most radical of modern analyses and here too wefind that the Northern Kingdom (with whom of course Damascus was in alli-ance at the point where her history impinged especially on Judah) is referredto initially as Ephraim (this was later expanded to ldquothe children of Israelrdquo)⁹

Paul M Cook A Sign and a Wonder the Redactional Formation of Isaiah 18ndash20 (Leiden Brill2011) 1ndash47 For this minimal analysis see eg Scholastika Deck Die Gerichtsbotschaft Jesajas Charakterund Begruumlndung (Wuumlrzburg Echter Verlag 1991) 53ndash55 78ndash79 Uwe Becker Jesaja ndash von derBotschaft zum Buch (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1997) 274ndash75 Matthijs de JongIsaiah among the Ancient Near Eastern Prophets A Comparative Study of the Earliest Stages ofthe Isaiah Tradition and the Neo-Assyrian Prophecies (Leiden Brill 2007) 146ndash47 is similarthough he also retains part of verse 2 see too Heide-Marie Pfaff Die Entwicklung des Restgedank-ens in Jesaja 1ndash39 (Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang 1996) 85ndash88 For a more generous thoughstill critical analysis of the whole chapter see Donner Israel unter den Voumllkern 38ndash42 MichaelE W Thompson Situation and Theology Old Testament Interpretations of the Syro-EphraimiteWar (Sheffield Almond 1982) 42ndash45 Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaia 106ndash7


The relationship of verses 4ndash6 with verses 1ndash3 is less clear On the onehand the introductory ldquoAnd it shall come to pass on that dayrdquo is very oftenused elsewhere to indicate a subsequent addition or expansion On the otherhand there is little in the verses themselves to point to a substantially laterdate It seems to announce the future downfall of ldquothe glory of Jacobrdquo Wehave not met this designation previously though we shall need to look later attwo or three other occurrences of it we shall find that it can certainly be used(against what we might at first suppose) for the Southern Kingdom of JudahIn the context following verses 1ndash3 however it is difficult not to suppose thatit refers here to the Northern Kingdom Ephraim though why there should bea change of name here is not agreed Is it possible that we have two originallyseparate poetic units in verses 1ndash3 and 4ndash6 which have here been combined(we may note the use of the catchword ldquogloryrdquo in verses 3 and 4) If so the pos-sibility presents itself that verses 4ndash6 have in view not the fate of Israel in theaftermath of the Syro-Ephraimite crisis but rather the later eventual fall to theAssyrians in 720 (or whenever precisely it was)sup1⁰ If so it would furnish one ofonly very few direct references to that particular event

A final passage that demands our attention in this section of our study is281ndash4 on which I still adhere to the view that I argued already more than twen-ty years agosup1sup1 Although it is generally agreed to start a significant new section inthe book it is striking that it has no heading in contrast with 11 21 and 131 aswell as the different form of heading in 61 and 1428 In addition it is curious tofind a woe-saying directed towards the Northern Kingdom opening a series ofwoe sayings in the following chapters which seem most naturally to be relatedto the situation in Judah just before 701 BCE twenty years or so after the fallof Samaria It is therefore perhaps helpful to recall that we only consider thatit starts a new section in the book because it follows chapters 24ndash27 whichstand out as a distinct section of their ownWhile the conclusion is thus entirelyjustified so far as the present shape of the book is concerned the situation looksvery different when we recall that 24ndash27 was certainly added quite late inthe composition history of the book Before that 281ndash4 will have followedstraight after the other oracles against the nations and in fact there is no reasonwhy we should not simply assume that it was originally one of those introduced

For the possibility that some of the material in the following verses also refers to the North-ern Kingdom see Willem A M Beuken ldquoFrom Damascus to Mount Zion a Journey Through theLand of the Harvester (Isaiah 17ndash 18)rdquo in lsquoEnlarge the Site of Your Tentrsquo the City as UnifyingTheme in Isaiah ed Archibald L H M van Wieringen and Annemarieke van der Woude (LeidenBrill 2011) 63ndash80 See Williamson The Book Called Isaiah 184ndash88 where the case is set out in fuller detail


by ldquowoerdquo just like 181 Rather like Amos 1ndash2 in reverse a series of oraclesagainst various nations led originally to Judahrsquos nearest neighbour and wasthen turned to Judah herself with a series of woe and massarsquo oracles in the re-mainder of 28ndash31 Without going into further detail here it suffices to notethat the Northern Kingdom is again called Ephraim (vv 1 and 3)

Moving slightly further afield we find comparably that in the early poem in105ndash9 13ndash 15sup1sup2 Assyria is addressed directly but the reference is to her dealingswith ldquoa godless nationrdquo (v 6)While some have argued that this refers to Judahsup1sup3or to both kingdoms togethersup1⁴ I strongly agree with the majority view that thereference is exclusively to the Northern Kingdomsup1⁵ for the following reasons(i) in verse 6 the ldquogodless nationrdquo echoes the language of 916 while the furtherdescription of them as people ldquowho arouse my furyrdquo uses a word for fury whichdoes not derive from the previous verse (anger and rage) but rather from 918 aswe have already seen the people in view in 916 and 18 are Ephraim and Sama-ria (ii) The reference to taking spoil and plunder (also in v 6) recalls the name ofthe child Maher-shalal-hash-baz in 81ndash4 and in the explanation in v 4 theldquospoilrdquo is linked directly with Samaria (iii) The continuation of verse 6 by statingthat they will be made into ldquosomething that is trampled down like mud in thestreetsrdquo clearly recalls 283 where we are told that ldquothe crown of the drunkardsof Ephraim will be trampled under footrdquo Thus all four clauses in verse 6 haveclose parallels elsewhere in the early material in Isaiah that refers explicitly toEphraim Israel or Samaria (iv) finally the sequence of cities conquered by

In my opinion which again is shared by many others verses 10ndash 11 and verse 12 representlater additions in which the lessons of the Northern Kingdom are reapplied to the Southern Igive reasons for this conclusion together with fuller bibliography in ldquoIdols in Isaiah in theLight of Isaiah 1010ndash11rdquo in New Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy and History Essaysin Honour of Hans M Barstad ed Rannfrid I Thelle Terje Stordalen and Mervyn E J Richardson(Leiden Brill 2015) 17ndash28 Eg Marti Das Buch Jesaja 105 Johann Fischer Das Buch Isaias uumlbersetzt und erklaumlrtKapitel 1ndash39 (Bonn Hanstein 1937) 94 Eg August Dillmann Der Prophet Jesaia (Leipzig Hirzel 1890 5th edition) 105 Edward JYoung The Book of Isaiah The English Text with Introduction Exposition and Notes (Grand Rap-ids MI Eerdmans 1965) 360 Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 110ndash 11 Eg Wilhelm Gesenius Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Commentar uumlber den Jesaia(Leipzig Vogel 1821) 391 Ferdinand Hitzig Der Prophet Jesaja (Heidelberg Winter 1833) 126Otto Procksch Jesaia I (Leipzig Deichert 1930) 164 Josef Schreiner Sion-Jerusalem Jahwehs Kouml-nigssitz Theologie der Heiligen Stadt im Alten Testament (Munich Koumlsel 1963) 264 de JongIsaiah among the Ancient Near Eastern Prophets 128 Arie van der Kooij ldquolsquoNimrod a MightyHunter before the Lordrsquo Assyrian Royal Ideology as Perceived in the Hebrew Biblerdquo Journalfor Semitics 21 (2012) 15 Konrad Schmid ldquoDie Anfaumlnge des Jesajabuchsrdquo in Congress VolumeMunich 2013 ed Christl M Maier (Leiden Brill 2014) 435


the Assyrian as listed in verse 9 reaches its climax with Samaria Now it maywell be that rather as in the case of the sequence in 78ndash9a the reader ismeant tacitly to conclude from this that the same could apply by extension toJerusalem but that is not the same thing as saying that Jerusalem is directlymentioned here The whole structure of the passage leads up to and shouldtherefore be referred to Samaria Since Damascus is referred to as a citywhich Assyria has already conquered (see v 9) we must assume that this pas-sage is later than 732 BCE when the northern part of Israel was also annexedand that it has in view the final fall of Samaria to the Assyrians a decade orso latersup1⁶ The use of the name Samaria is thus entirely appropriate here andagain we should note that the name Israel is not used in this connection

A more precise date is difficult to determine In my view the reference to the defeat of Carch-emish in verse 9 means that it cannot be earlier than 717 BCE see J David Hawkins ldquoKarkamišrdquoin RlA 5 ed Dietz Otto Edzard (1980) 441 445 Karen Radner ldquoProvinz C Assyrienrdquo in RlA 11ed Michael P Streck (2008) 58 Some have thought that the failure to list Ashdod which wassubjugated by the Assyrians in 711 BCE indicates a date earlier than that hence quite narrowlybetween 717 and 711 BCE eg Procksch Jesaia 166 Schreiner Sion-Jerusalem 265 Walter Die-trich Jesaja und die Politik (Munich Kaiser 1976) 118 Hermann Barth Die Jesaja-Worte in derJosiazeit Israel und Assur als Thema einer produktiven Neuinterpretation der Jesajauumlberlieferung(Neukirchen-Vluyn Neukirchener Verlag 1977) 26 Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaja 118Francolino J Gonccedilalves LrsquoExpeacutedition de Sennacheacuterib en Palestine dans la litteacuterature heacutebraiumlqueancienne (Paris Gabalda 1986) 260 but this particular argument is weak There is no sugges-tion that every city conquered by Assyria should be included and Ashdod would not have suitedthe north-south arrangement of the list so well given that it is south of Samaria see correctlyErich Bosshard-Nepustil Rezeptionen von Jesaia 1ndash39 im Zwoumllfprophetenbuch Untersuchungenzur literarischen Verbindung von Prophetenbuumlchern in babylonischer und persischer Zeit (FreiburgUniversitaumltsverlag and Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1997) 240ndash41 n 6 Others there-fore have claimed that the passage should best be set immediately prior to the Assyrian inva-sion in 701 BCE in the course of Hezekiahrsquos revolt eg Duhm Jesaia 97 Skinner Isaiah 83ndash84Marti Jesaja 105 Edward J Kissane The Book of Isaiah Translated from a Critically Revised He-brew Text with Commentary 1 indashxxxix (Dublin Browne and Nolan 1941) 123 Paul Auvray Isaiumle1ndash39 (Paris Gabalda 1972) 135 William R Gallagher Sennacheribrsquos Campaign to Judah NewStudies (Leiden Brill 1999) 85ndash86 Joseph Blenkinsopp Isaiah 1ndash39 a New Translation withIntroduction and Commentary (New York Doubleday 2000) 254 Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 110not unreasonably rejects this latter opinion on the ground that ldquoIsaiah condemned the allianceon which Hezekiahrsquos revolt was based and foretold its disastrous outcomerdquo It may be noted inaddition that this date is often supported by the reference to Jerusalem in verse 11 but if thatverse is secondary as most rightly believe then that part of the argument loses its forceWhile there can be no final certainty therefore (so Gray Isaiah IndashXXVII 196 Wildberger Jesaja1ndash 12 393ndash94 [= Isaiah 1ndash 12 415] Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 110 Deck Die Gerichtsbotschaft Jesa-jas 39) the earlier date possibly in connection with the Ashdod rebellionwhich began in 713 isto be preferred


I mentioned that at 174 we find the expression ldquothe glory of Jacobrdquo in rela-tion to the Northern Kingdom and that some scholars attribute this to Isaiah him-self It follows that we should also survey other uses of Jacob in chapters 1ndash39sup1⁷The name appears as part of the divine titles ldquothe God of Jacobrdquo in 23 and ldquotheHoly One of Jacobrdquo in 2923 in the expression ldquohouse of Jacobrdquo in 25 6 8171020 141 (second occurrence of the name in that verse) 2922 (first occurrence)and in a more free-standing manner in 97 1021 141 (first occurrence) 174 2769 2922 (second occurrence) Of these the majority should certainly be datedwell after the time of Isaiah himself In most cases this would not be in seriousdispute though a few are less certain In my opinion a serious case for Isaianicauthorship can be maintained in relation only to 26 817 97 and 176sup1⁸

Isaiah 26 introduces the famous poem against human hubris with the wordsldquoYou have abandoned your people the house of Jacobrdquo Even among those who(like myself) are sympathetic to the largely Isaianic origin of this verse there aresome who hold on quite strong grounds that our particular phrase was addedonly redactionally well after Isaiahrsquos timesup1⁹ In that case it would not be relevantfor our present inquiry

Taking it as original for the sake of argument it has occasionally beenthought that the reference here is exclusively to the Northern Kingdomsup2⁰ This de-pends in part on construing the phrase ldquohouse of Jacobrdquo as a vocative and in parton the suggestion that in authentically Isaianic sayings Jacob always refers to theNorthern Kingdom Neither supposition is beyond challenge however So far asthe syntax of the verse is concerned the versions are divided and so cannot set-tle the matter either way More tellingly the construal as vocative results in anawkward shift from second person address here to third person in the immedi-

See also Wolfgang Werner Eschatologische Texte in Jesaja 1ndash39 Messias Heiliger RestVoumllker (Wuumlrzburg Echter 1982) 112ndash 14 Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaja 16ndash17 forusage in the second half of the book see Hugh G M Williamson ldquoJacob in Isaiah 40ndash66rdquoin Continuity and Discontinuity Chronological and Thematic Development in Isaiah 40ndash66 edLena-Sofia Tiemeyer and Hans M Barstad (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2014)219ndash29 Some of the passages in the first half such as 141 come very close to what we findin the distinctive terminology of chapters 40ndash48 in particular For 21ndash4 as exilic see Williamson Isaiah 1ndash5 173ndash78 25 is a redactional join between 2ndash4and 6ndash 19 the name Jacob being one of the important connecting elements See for instance Marvin A Sweeney Isaiah 1ndash39 with an Introduction to Prophetic Literature(Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1996) 102 See especially J J M Roberts ldquoIsaiah 2 and the Prophetrsquos Message to the Northrdquo JQR 75(1984ndash85) 290ndash308 and Roberts First Isaiah 44


ately following linessup2sup1 and in addition as Gesenius observed long ago outsideof purely secular contexts the verb שטנ is usually used with God as subjectsup2sup2 Onthe second argument the evidence that in Isaiah Jacob only ever refers to theNorthern Kingdom seems to me quite unjustified 817 to which I shall turnnext seems categorically to rule out this proposal and in the present chapter(which in this argument is taken as a whole) verse 3 seems equally clear Aswe shall see later the God of Jacob seems to be peculiarly associated with theJerusalem temple so that it is difficult to envisage that Judah would not atleast be included in a reference such as the present one The choice of titlewas probably determined by religio-historical rather than crudely political con-siderations If authentic its reference in 26 will therefore coincide with 817 towhich I now turn

This verse comes right at the end of the first-person material included inchapters 6 and 8 While I agree that verse 18 immediately following should beattributed to a later redactor there is no good reason to include verse 17 withthis as has occasionally been suggestedsup2sup3 In particular it is difficult to supposethat verses 16ndash 17 do not predate 308 It would be very odd to have a much laterwriter indicating that Isaiah would still see Godrsquos deliverance within his own life-time such a ldquomistakerdquo is more readily intelligible as a reflection of Isaiahrsquos ownthinking early on in his ministry

This is the only place in this block of first-person material where (the houseof) Jacob is mentioned at all Just before in verse 14 we find the unique expres-sion ldquothe two houses of Israelrdquo which I will discuss more fully below I suggestthat in the present instance the referent is the same (ie a name that was inclu-sive of those in both kingdoms) It is suitable at this concluding point of the pas-sage which began with the temple vision that we should revert to a peculiarlycult-based title to indicate the temporary withdrawal of Godrsquos protecting favourto his people (broadly conceived) In fact fuller study could show that all threemain elements in the verse (the verbs to describe Isaiahrsquos action the clause todescribe Godrsquos action and the phrase which identifies the people affected) are

See Marvin A Sweeney Isaiah 1ndash4 and the Post-Exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition(Berlin de Gruyter 1988) 139ndash40 including a helpfully full survey of the versional evidence Gesenius Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Commentar uumlber den Jesaia 182 For both points see my arguments in Hugh G MWilliamson ldquoA Sign and a Portent in Isaiah818rdquo in Studies in the Text and Versions of the Hebrew Bible in Honour of Robert Gordon edGeoffrey Khan and Diana Lipton (Leiden Brill 2012) 77ndash86 and idrdquoIsaiah Prophet of Wealor Woerdquo in ldquoThus Speaks Ishtar of Arbelardquo Prophecy in Israel Assyria and Egypt in the Neo-As-syrian Period ed Robert P Gordon and Hans M Bartsad (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2013)287ndash91


all drawn from a similar cultic milieu Judah must certainly at least be includedtherefore in Isaiahrsquos understanding of the house of Jacob

This conclusion fits perfectly with what I have already written with regardto 97 where Jacob is also used in an inclusive sense In sum 817 and 97 go to-gether If the occurrence in 26 is original (which is uncertain) it too could fit thesame picture though a reference there to Judah alone seems contextually moreprobable This leaves only 174 as a possible reference to the Northern Kingdomalone though it is equally disputed whether this verse should be ascribed toIsaiah

I conclude this survey of nomenclature relating to the Northern Kingdomtherefore by stating that Isaiah generally referred to it as Ephraim occasionallySamaria and perhaps once Jacob He uses the name Israel in relation to it onlywhen that is firmly subsumed from a literary perspective to the dominant Eph-raim title never so far as we have seen in isolation These findings thereforeraise in an acute form the question why Isaiah avoided almost completely theuse of the name Israel in the way that we might have regarded as standard forthe Northern Kingdomsup2⁴

An important clue comes in the first-person material in chapter 8 We havealready noted the use of Samaria in verses 1ndash4 and this is followed in verses5ndash8a with an indictment against ldquothis peoplerdquo whom I take to be Judahsup2⁵While it is clear that the sayings in 1ndash4 and 5ndash8 have been joined redactionallythat does not entail as a necessary consequence that this could only have hap-pened very late For a host of reasons relating to literary inter-connections andtheological consistency which cannot all be itemised here the literary integrity

To my embarrassment I was not aware until her participation in the conference that under-lies this volume of the important and detailed monograph of Kristin Weingart Staumlmmevolk ndashStaatsvolk ndash Gottesvolk Studien zur Verwendung des Israel-Namens im Alten Testament (Tuumlbin-gen Mohr Siebeck 2014)While inevitably there are points of difference between us (eg on theinterpretation of Isa 57) we seem to be running along parallel lines in regard to some of themajor issues which I now go on to address (see especially her pp 190ndash227 342ndash44 and360ndash64 though other parts of the book are also relevant) Rather than completely rework myoriginal draft in the light of her research I have therefore decided to keep this part of thetext more or less as first written in order that readers can distinguish more clearly how wehave worked independently to reach our broadly compatible conclusions as well as to comparethem and decide which they prefer on matters of detail I have discussed this in advance of my forthcoming commentary in Hugh G MWilliamsonldquoThe Waters of Shiloah (Isaiah 85ndash8)rdquo in The Fire Signals of Lachish Studies in the Archaeologyand History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age Iron Age and Persian Period in Honor of David Us-sishkin ed Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Narsquoaman (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) 331ndash43


of 61ndash 11+81ndash8a 11ndash 17 seems to me too strong to denysup2⁶ It is therefore no co-incidence that after these sayings against Samaria and Judah the two aredrawn together in the following passage with a reference to the downfall ofldquothe two houses of Israelrdquo From Isaiahrsquos own pen therefore we have hereclear evidence that he considered Israel to be a name which embraced both Eph-raimSamaria and JudahJerusalem In other words in terms of political realitieson the ground he favoured using ancient tribal designations together with refer-ence to the capital cities whereas he preferred to reserve the name Israel forsome sort of overarching unity between the twosup2⁷

Because of uncertainties about the dating of oracles within Isaiahrsquos own life-time it is difficult to be certain whether there are other passages which supportthis view from the years prior to the fall of Samariasup2⁸ The strongest candidate isin the Song of the Vineyard in 51ndash7 While the date of this passage cannot becertainly established I have argued elsewhere that for several reasons it fitsmost naturally into the first part of Isaiahrsquos ministrysup2⁹ In the concluding versewe read that ldquothe vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel and thepeople of Judah are the planting in which he took delightrdquo There are three pos-sible ways of understanding the relationship between these two names they

For full argumentation see my forthcoming commentary Some of the arguments are present-ed in a preliminary way in Williamson ldquoIsaiah Prophet of Weal or Woerdquo For a different approach to this expression see the important study by Reinhard G KratzldquoThe Two Houses of Israelrdquo in Let Us Go up to Zion Essays in Honour of HGM Williamsonon the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday ed Iain Provan and Mark J Boda (Leiden Brill2012) 167ndash79 He rightly makes the point that in this context ldquohouserdquo has to be understood po-litically rather than just culturally or religiously (in contrast for instancewith ldquohouse of Jacobrdquo)Encouraged by the reception of the passage in CD he ties the present passage diachronicallyhowever with 717 and so finds the use of Israel to be much later than Isaiah being part ofthe ldquoall-Israelrdquo perspective which he finds developing in the later Isaiah tradition As I shallelaborate a little later in this essay I find it possible to believe that Isaiah held together asense of the two contemporary kingdoms with an inherited appreciation of their greater unitySo far as 717 is concerned I agree that 71ndash17 can only have been written and later incorporatedin the book well after Isaiahrsquos lifetime At the same time it may well include a sound memory ofsome of Isaiahrsquos own words (allowances of course have to be made for alteration over time) Tothe extent that 717 comes into this category I agree that it may well reflect his understandingthat this greater unity derived from a period which we now call the United Monarchy Whetherhe was historically correct in this (as many still think) or not (as others hold) is not somethingwhich need affect the exegesis of his sayings 13 for example seems to refer to the people as a whole under the name Israel but in myview and that of many others this was not written as early as the time when the Northern King-dom still existed see Williamson Isaiah 1ndash5 28ndash30 See Williamson Isaiah 1ndash5 330ndash31


could be synonymous they could be completely distinct (referring to the north-ern and southern kingdoms respectively) or it could be a case where the firstname is further specified by the second Although the second possibility hasbeen quite popularsup3⁰ it seems the least likely here The vineyard and the ldquoplant-ing in which he took delightrdquo are clearly not two wholly separate elements but atthe least overlap in some measure and it would be very strange if Judah were notalso included within the referent of the vineyard Similarly to make the twoterms completely synonymous as in the first possibilitysup3sup1 also seems unlikelyIf this passage dates from early in the prophetrsquos ministry when the NorthernKingdom still existed such usage would at the least be confusing The third pos-sibility by contrast has much to commend itsup3sup2 It fits best the form of parallelismhere (nearer definition) and it fits exactly with Isaiahrsquos use of Israel alreadynoted namely the people of God as a whole

More promising in this regard is I believe the divine title ldquothe Holy One ofIsraelrdquo While this title comes twelve times in Isaiah 1ndash39 not all occurrences byany means can be ascribed to Isaiah himself Indeed in a study of this title in thebook as a whole I have argued elsewhere that probably only 519 3011 12 25311 go back to Isaiah himself and these probably all come from the period lead-ing immediately up to 701 BCEsup3sup3 There is no evidence that Isaiah himself coinedthis expression and indeed if he had we should have expected to find it in theaccount of his vision in chapter 6 with its related cry in the Trisagion Rather it

Eg Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 59ndash60 Gale E Yee ldquoA Form-Critical Study of Isaiah 51ndash7 as aSong and a Juridical Parablerdquo CBQ 43 (1981) 37ndash38 Renatus Porath Die Sozialkritik im Jesaja-buch Redaktionsgeschichtliche Analyse (Frankfurt Peter Lang 1994) 183ndash84 Klaus SeyboldldquoDas Weinberglied des Propheten Jesaja (51ndash7)rdquo in id Die Sprache der Propheten Studienzur Literaturgeschichte der Prophetie (Zuumlrich Pano 1999) 117 So Wildberger Jesaja 1ndash 12 171ndash72 (= Isaiah 1ndash 12 184ndash85)Willy Schottroff ldquoDas Weinberg-lied Jesajas (Jes 5 1-7) Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Parabelrdquo ZAW 82 (1970) 89 Kirsten NielsenThere Is Hope for a Tree The Tree as Metaphor in Isaiah (Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press1989) 108ndash 14 (though she allows that it may have been reapplied to the Northern Kingdomin a later reinterpretation) Cf Anders J Bjoslashrndalen Untersuchungen zur allegorischen Rede der Propheten Amos und Je-saja (Berlin de Gruyter 1986) 316ndash18 who lists many earlier commentators who adopted thisview add now Lukas M Muntingh ldquoThe Name lsquoIsraelrsquo and Related Terms in the Book of Isaiahrdquoin Studies in Isaiah OTWSA 22 1979 and OTWSA 23 1980 edWouter C van Wyk (Pretoria So-ciety for the Study of the Old Testament 1982) 159ndash82 Hubert Irsigler ldquoSpeech Acts and Inten-tion in the lsquoSong of the Vineyardrsquo Isaiah 51ndash7rdquo OTE 10 (1997) 64 Willem A M Beuken Jesaja1ndash 12 (Freiburg Herder 2003) 138 See Hugh G MWilliamson ldquoIsaiah and the Holy One of Israelrdquo in Biblical Hebrew BiblicalTexts Essays in Memory of Michael P Weitzman ed Ada Rapoport-Albert and Gillian Greenberg(Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press 2001) 22ndash38


is my belief that its occurrence three times in the Psalter (Pss 7122 7841 8919)indicates that it may have been an infrequently used title in the liturgy whetheror not these three Psalms pre-date Isaiah (and many would argue that they donot) it is more probable that they reflect ancient liturgical use (which of courseis notoriously conservative) than that they have picked the title up from Isaiah orthe later Isaiah traditionsup3⁴

I should make a similar case for ldquothe God of Jacobrdquo which astonishinglycomes in the Zion Psalm 468 12 as well as in a number of other psalms201 246 (by a probable emendation) 7510 767 812 5 849 947 1465(again without regard to the question whether these particular psalms areearly though a strong case can be made for that in some instances)sup3⁵ and like-wise the even commoner title ldquothe God of Israelrdquo (some 200 occurrences inall though in only three instances can any sort of case be made for use by Isaiahhimself sup3⁶) along with the rare ldquoStrong One of Israelrdquo (Isa 124 almost certainlyIsaianic) which sits alongside the commoner ldquoStrong One of Jacobrdquo elsewhere(Gen 4924 Isa 4926 6016 Ps 1322 5)sup3⁷ All this needs to be contrasted withthe fact that we never find even once any such title as ldquothe God of Judahrdquosup3⁸which might have been expected if the Southern Kingdom was from its earliestorigins a completely separate entity from the Northern Kingdom but one whichhappened to share in the worship of the same deity For whatever reasonsup3⁹ so far

Contrast in this regard the only other occurrences of the title outside Isaiah in 2Kgs 1922Jer 5029 515 The title ldquoGod of Jacobrdquo occurs at Isa 23 but in my opinion this is in a passage which datesto the exilic period For ldquothe house of Jacobrdquo in verses 5 and 6 see above See Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaja 14ndash16 I am well aware of the discussion about the vocalization of the first element in these divinetitles but as it is the name IsraelJacob which is my primary concern here that may be left asidefor the moment For some introductory considerations see Williamson Isaiah 1ndash5 141ndash42 Bycontrast ldquothe Rock of Israelrdquo (3029) probably and ldquothe Light of Israelrdquo (1017) almost certainlycome in passages which are later than Isaiah on the latter see Hugh G MWilliamson ldquoA NewDivine Title in Isaiah 1017rdquo in Open-Mindedness in the Bible and Beyond A Volume of Studies inHonour of Bob Becking ed Marjo C A Korpel and Lester L Grabbe (London TampT Clark 2015)315ndash20 Contra Philip R Davies The Origins of Biblical Israel (New York and London TampT Clark2007) 22 Usually this has been explained as the natural consequence of the fact that a once unitednation divided into two after the death of Solomon For those who find themselves unable his-torically to accept that there ever was such a United Monarchy ndash in terms of contributors to thepresent volume see especially Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2015)ndash it would presumably be necessary to speculate about some form of common tribal symbiosis


as I am aware we find here the historically unprecedented situation of two na-tions in the ancient Near East sharing in the worship of the same deity The lan-guage of the liturgy reflects this and in my opinion demands a much strongerhistorical explanation than the supposition that the name Israel only came tobe used in Judah after the fall of Samaria⁴⁰ it is difficult to see why that admit-tedly seismic event should have been the trigger for so fundamental a change ofdirection in the religion of a neighbouring country Rather it can only have givenmomentum for some underlying religious usage to be extended into the socialand even political spheres Isaiah for his part was not creating but rather draw-ing on and developing traditions with which he was familiar from his participa-tion in public worship⁴sup1

The extent to which this development in terminology took root can hardly beoverestimated The fact that we have found that so many of the passages that in-clude the names Israel and Jacob with reference to the Southern Kingdom areprobably to be dated after Isaiahrsquos time is already an early indication As wemove into the unquestionably later sections of the book as a whole this becomeseven more pronounced⁴sup2 And of course there are plenty of other books to whichwe might later turn our attention⁴sup3 The view that all this was a completely novelappropriation of the name of one country by another fails to offer any explana-tion as to why anyone should have thought of doing so in the first place Unlessthere was any prior sense in Judah that somehow they had some stake in the

which ante-dated the development of the political monarchy first in the north and then later inthe south The most persuasive proponent of this alternative view is undoubtedly Reinhard G KratzldquoIsrael in the Book of Isaiahrdquo JSOT 31 (2006) 103ndash28 = id ldquoIsrael im Jesajabuchrdquo in Die un-widerstehliche Wahrheit Studien zur alttestamentlichen Prophetie Festschrift fuumlr Arndt Meinholded Ruumldiger Lux and Ernst-Joachim Waschke (Leipzig Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2006)85ndash 103 (reprinted in Reinhard G Kratz Prophetenstudien Kleine Schriften II [Tuumlbingen MohrSiebeck 2011] 160ndash76) This position has been developed even further by eg WolfgangSchuumltte ldquoWie wurde Juda israelitisiertrdquo ZAW 124 (2012) 52ndash72 but unfortunately he gives noattention in his article to the material in Isaiah 1ndash39 I note here the likelihood in view of such divine titles as ldquoGod of Jacobrdquo and ldquoLord of Hostsrdquothat these names may have come to have their close association with the Jerusalem cult fromtheir original attachment to the ark I acknowledge however that this depends on ascribinggreater historical credibility to some of the historical narratives in Samuel and Kings thansome are able to share See eg Kratz ldquoIsrael in the Book of Isaiahrdquo and for a distinctive nuance Gary N Knop-pers ldquoWho or What is Israel in Trito-Isaiahrdquo in Provan and Boda ed Let us Go up to Zion153ndash65 Perhaps I may be allowed to refer for one much later example to Hugh G M WilliamsonIsrael in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1977)


name and all that it signified the fall of Samaria and the probable influx of ref-ugees could hardly have been an adequate cause Isaiah is one of the very fewauthors whose writings have survived who lived through those turbulent deca-des⁴⁴ and our survey has revealed that he was acutely sensitive to the powerfulassociations that names can evoke While the two kingdoms still existed he re-ferred to them primarily under tribal designations supplemented with thenames of their capital cities and he reserved the more evocative names of Israeland Jacob for their wider unity as expressed not by political labels but in the lan-guage of ancient cult and liturgy It was precisely the loss of one of these politicalentities (the other followed later as well of course) that freed him and his suc-cessors to turn more boldly to their application to the survivors initially as thecontinuing kingdom of Judah together with those who survived of the NorthernKingdom either as refugees or as residents elsewhere and eventually to an ex-clusively social cultural and religious community without strict geographicaldefinition at all

For a parallel (and partially overlapping) study to the present one which also includes evi-dence from Isaiahrsquos contemporary Micah see Hugh G MWilliamson ldquoJudah as Israel in Eighth-Century Prophecyrdquo in A God of Faithfulness Essays in Honour of J Gordon McConville on his 60th

Birthday ed Jamie A Grant Alison Lo and Gordon J Wenham (New York and London TampTClark 2011) 81ndash95


Indices

1 General index

Abel-beth-maacah (Tell Abil el-Qamh) 196305 311 329

Abydos 140 143Adad-nerari III 191 203 236 356Adrammelech 218ndash221 260Aguršicirc 103Ahab 98 152 172 216 217 278 284

292 305 307 332 340 355Ahaz 9 12 243 259 271ndash275 279 280

283ndash289 294ndash296 307 336 338339 358 359 379

Ahaziah 216 217 278 282 292 293 305307 315 317 331 332 340

Ahaziahu 314Ahijah 311Ahi-Yau 116Ahzi-Yau 121Akko 189Akzib 189Alara 119 127Ama 106Amaziah 280ndash283 289 306 325Amenirdis I 140 142Ammon 98 321Amon 306Amqarruna (Ekron) 67Amun 140Amurru 60 62 70 77Anatolia 163Anzaria 110Apis 127Apku (Tell Abu Marya) 38Arabia Arabs 42 70 71 85 99 108 109

119 163 352Aram 7 9 259 262 311 356 357 360

387Aramaic 39 57 102 135 314 315 317Aramaean(s) 68 76 87 200 283 289

310 311 314 315 317 321 328 331338 359 360 363 365

Arbela 103archaeology archaeological evidence 1 2

8 11 12 22 24ndash27 30 31 37 41 55

56 81 87 88 94ndash98 147ndash208 235308 310 318 330 348 375

ndash Atlit 96ndash Bethsaida 330ndash Carchemish 322ndash Chinnereth 330ndash Dor 96ndash Jezreel 8 12 197ndash202ndash Megiddo 8 12 190ndash197ndash Samaria 8 12 30 27 28 55 56 81

94 95 147ndash187 235 346 363 375ndash Tell Dan 330ndash Tell el-Fārlsquoah 325ndash Tell el-Ful 26ndash Tell Hadid 204ndash Tell Qudadi 26Arda-Mullissi 220Argob 328Arieh 328Arpad 60 61 64 76ndash78 84 85Arslan Tash 40Aruma 47Arwad 67Arzah 313Arzuhina 108Asa 271 279 283 292 310 311Ashdod 67 129 131 135 137 161 343

390Asherah 217Ashkelon 97 189Ashtarot 328Ashurbanipal 50 52 91 115 148 164Ashurnasirpal II 44 51Ashur Assur Ass ur (city) 38 40 41 43

44 52 67 69 103 104 107 109 111112 119 219

Ashur Assur Ass ur (god) 46 52 5960 62ndash65 78 91 101 102 158 161319 378

Assyria Assyrian(s) passimAsyut 140 142 143Assur-etel-ilani 51Assur-nerari V 324

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-020

Assur-sarru-usur 91Astammaku 65Atalya 43 81Athaliah 289 306 315 332Atlit 96Auširsquo (see also Hoshea) 332Avva 106 107 264Awen 377Azariah 271ndash276 278ndash281 283 285ndash

291 294 295 307 359Azekah 67 68Azri-Yau 58 359

Baʿal 226 295 340Barsquoalu 97 135Barsquoil-gazara 67Baasha 262 271 305 307 310ndash314

318 332ndash334Babylon 5 43 50 91 106ndash108 157 162

233 264 344 349 364Babylonia 42 50 52 75 84 93 97 106

108 116 349 350 353 361Bakanranef 132 133 143Bashan 309Bel 91Ben-Hadad 311 329 356Beth-Awen (see also Bethel) 377 379Bethel 214 218 309 340 341 377 379Beth-Issachar 311Bethsaida (et-Tell) 330Biqa Valley 329Bit-Amukani 106Bit-Bagaia 110Bit-Humria 37 41 42 44ndash49 52 53 69

70 80 81 85 150 165 172 190 315364

Bit-Yakin 108 162 163Book of Chronicles 75 237 246 255 258

259 262 279Book of Deuteronomy 254Book of Ezekiel 239ndash241 344Book of Hosea 1 7 13 369ndash382 385Book of Isaiah 1 7 13 236 259 383ndash

398Book of Jeremiah 238ndash241Book of Kings passimBook of Samuel 227 397

Books of the Prophets 5 7 8 298ldquoBook of the Twelverdquo 374Borsippa 162Bubastis (Per-Bast) 134 141ndash143Byblos 135

Calah rarr see KalhuCarchemish 71 163 322 390Carthage 136cavalry 65 72 78 79 115 196 206 208Chaldean 108chariots chariotry 49 63 65 71ndash75 78

79 85 93 98 103 108 113ndash117 123149 158 162 164 165 191 192 196204ndash206 208 313 355 378

Chinnereth (Tell el-ʻOreimeh) 330Cilician 91Cis-Jordan 328Cutha 107 264Cyprus 43 78Dadi-larim 121

Damascus 7 9 58 60 61 64 7076ndash78 85 87 94 112 134 155 160185 189 236 259 283 296 305327ndash329 348 349 356 358ndash361364 365 385 387 390

Dan (Tell el-Qadi ) 214 218 225 309 311340 341

Darius II 335David 225 226 254 259 284 314Davidic dynasty 243 307 332 333 385Deir ez-Zor 106Delta 12 130ndash138 141 143deportation resettlement 10 12 21 49

53 70 74 93 101ndash124 149 154 165ndash167 185 190 204 235 236 243 264305 329 330 336ndash338 346 350352 364

Der 63 66 68 75 76 108Deuteronomistic HistoryHistorian 9 21

214 230 233 236 237 239 242 243245 255 263 307 308 312 314 316325 332 376 377 378 385

Dimasqa (province see also Damascus)328

Diyarbakır 106

402 1 General index

Dor 96 189Dothan 317Dur-Yakin 162 166Dur-Katlimmu (Tell Sheikh Hamad) 121 122Dur-Ladini 163Dur-Šarruken (Khorsabad) 43 45 46 55

61 63 67 68 70 71 75 78 80 97105 107 112ndash114 117 122 129 165193 204 351

Durdukka 166

Egypt Egyptian(s) 97 99 103 119 127130 131 133ndash144 191 206 218ndash223227 232 234 238 245 247 255 259260 262 285 336 342ndash344 348352 362 365 380 387

ndash 20th Dynasty 135ndash 22nd Dynasty 131 134 136 142 177ndash 23rd Dynasty 141 142ndash 24th Dynasty 143ndash 25th Dynasty 125 129 132 138ndash140

220Ehursaggalkurkurra 52lsquoEin Jezreel 197Ekron 32 63 67 161 186 312Elah 229 241 252 305 312 318 331

335ndash337 341Elam Elamite(s) 50 60 63 66 162 364el-Hiba (Teudjoi) 141Elijah 299Elisha 212 299 321 340Emuq-Assur 108Eni-ilu 190Ephraim Ephraimite 13 154 244 259

298 309 316 323 365 376 377 379381 384ndash389 393 394

er-Rām (al-Ram) 310Esarhaddon 39ndash41 47 48 50ndash52 97

103 118 120 135 148 156 157 162164 186 196

Esarra 111Ethiopia Ethiopian 137 218ndash221 223

260Euphrates 106 262 322 326 357Eusebius 268Exodus 224

Ezekiel (prophet see also Book of Ezekiel)241

Ezida 49 51 52

Fayum 141

Gabbutunu (see also Gibbethon) 67 312Gad 318 319Gaddi 318Gadi 262 318Gadite 318 321Galil 330Galilee Galilean 186 192 196 305 329

330 333 338 341 342 349 360 365Gambulu 163Gath 262Gaza 67 69 75 97 98 134 161 189

205ndash207 252 329 348 357 360Gazru 42Geba (Ǧeba) 310Gemenef-khonsu-bak 130 142Gezer 42 186 189 204 207 277 312Gibbethon 67 311 312 314Gibeah 379Gibil 167Gideon 225Gilboa 309Gilead Gileadite(s) 13 186 196 219

297ndash299 305 309 316ndash319 321327ndash330 333 338 358 365 376

Gozan Guzana (Tell Halaf) 74 93 105ndash107 113 118ndash120 122 263

ldquogrand strategyrdquo 11 87ndash99Greece Greek 6 12 174 175 211 212

214 216 219 227 256 268 274 279291 340

Gur 317

Habor rarr see KhaburHadad-idri 134Halah Ḫalaḫḫu 74 93 105ndash107 113 117

122 263Hamadan 110Hamath (Hama) Hamathean 44 55

58ndash62 64ndash66 69 70 76ndash80 82 8599 106 107 109 111 112 190 264351 364

1 General index 403

Ḫanunu 69 75Ḫarḫar (Tepe Giyan) 107 110Ḫarran 119 120Ḫarratum 350Ḫatarikka 62Hatti 70 83Hayapacirc 69 108 149Hazael 262 311 314 315 319 321 322

356 257Ḫazaqi-Yau 121Hazor (Tell el-Qedaḥ) 186 196 305 329Herakleopolis Herakleopolitan 134 141ndash

142 262Hermopolis 141ndash143Hezekiah 68 94 154 213 229 230 239

240 242 243 245 246 251ndash253 258264 267 271ndash275 279 280 285287ndash289 294 295 337ndash339 345348

ndash accession 243 272 275 279Hezekiahu 239 240 242Ḫinatuna 47Hiram 296Ḫirbet Bel‛ame 317Ḫirimma 350horse(s) 11 62 65 97 98 108 114 119

131 191 192 201 205 206 208Hosea (prophet see also Book of Hosea)

207 258 372Hoshea passimndash accession 154 272 275 280 283 286

287 331 348 349ndash capture 35 52 257 337 344 352 362ndash ldquoevil of Hosheardquo 213ndash218 227 340ndash imprisonment 84 154 229 230 231

234 236 244 248 345 362 364 365ndash vassalage 93 190 246 255ndash257 337

342 345 348 350 353 361Huleh 329 330 333Hulli 324Humbanigaš 60 66Ḫundur Ḫundureans 111Huru 103Huruaṣu 103

Ibadidi 69 108 149Ibleam 316 317 318

Ibu 108Ijon (Tell ed-Dibbin) 196 305 311 329Ilu-birsquodi (see also Yau-birsquodi) 58 69 76

112 351 364Iny 133Iran 40 41 43 129 166 269 296 357Irh ulena 80 112Isaiah (prophet see also Book of Isaiah)

238 383ndash398Israel Israelite(s) passimIsraelite annals 231 232Issachar 311Iti 127Itto-Baal (Tubail) 296Itursquoeans 91Iuput 142 143Iuwelot 140

Jabesh 316 318 323Jacob 13 383ndash385 388 391ndash393 396ndash

398Janoah 196 305 329Jashib (Yāsūf) 316 323Jeconiah 277Jehoahaz 262 286 289 305 307 332

344Jehoash 276 282 289 290Jehoiachin 234 236 237 262 344Jehoiakim 234 237Jehoram 280ndash282 284 292 293 307

314 326 340Jehoshaphat 278 280ndash283 292 293Jehu (prophet) 314Jehu (king) 134 172 276 277 289 293

298 305ndash307 312ndash317 331 332 340356

Jehuids Jehuite dynasty 299 314 316JeninEn Ganin (Ḫirbet Bel‛ame) 317Jeremiah (prophet see also Book of Jere-

miah) 238 241Jeroboam I 272 306 308ndash310 333Jeroboam II 191 213ndash215 217 269 270

272 281 289ndash291 294 298 305307ndash309 311 316 332 356 357 376

Jerusalem Jerusalemite 26 27 53 94134 154 160 185 213 214 243 258259 262 279 307 310 314 315 338

404 1 General index

339 341 348 358ndash360 365 381 383390 392 394 397

Jerusalem temple 283 392Jezebel 340Jezreel 8 12 189ndash202 206ndash208 317Joash 276 277 282 283 289 290 305ndash

307 315 332 356Joram 216 275 276 278 281 292 293

305 314 315 331 332Jordan (river) 189Josephus 36 38 268 352 353Joshua 254Josiah 222 225 277 362Jotham 12 271ndash275 279ndash281 283ndash289

294ndash296 298 339Judah Judean passimJudean annals 231

KalḫuCalah (Nimrud) 37 40 41 43 4951 52 55 66 71 73 98 113 116 117328 335 351 352 378

Kammanu 163Kar-Adad 110Karalla 129Kar-Issar 110Kar-Nabu 107 108Karnak 134Kar-Nergal 110Kar-Sarruken (Tepe Giyan) 107 110Kashta 127 137 140Kasku 81Keblaam 317Kedesh 196 305 329Khabur (Habor) 74 93 106 107 113 121

263Khmunu (Hermopolis) 141 143Khorsabad rarr see Dur-ŠarrukenKis eslu 107 110Kirbet Beit Farr 323Kis essim 107 109ndash111Kullania (Tell Tayinat) 63Kurdistan (Irak) 41Kurdistan (Iran) 129kurʾa 62Kush Kushite(s) 12 93 125 127ndash135

137ndash144 191Kuthah Cutha (Tell Ibrahim) 106

Lachish 27 42 94 185 198 326Lachish reliefs 42Lake Urmia 166Lamintu 141ldquolanguage of conquestrdquo 12 150ndash168 185Latin 6 211 212Lebanon 90 96Leontopolis 142Levant Levantine passimLibya Libyan 12 118ndash122 125 127 131

134ndash136 139ndash144Lilybaeum 136Lisht 141Litani 329ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo 101ndash123Lucian Lucianic 212 214 216 219 220Lucifer of Cagliari 225

Ma (Meshwesh) 139Maccabean revolt 330Magiddu (province see also Megiddo)

190 192 208 328 333Maher-shalal-hash-baz 389Maḫsi-Yau 120Manasseh 225 234 262 283 298 323

358 385Manassites Manassite tribe 23 318Manetho 125 127 132 134 142 143Mansuate 112Marduk 50Mantimeanhe (Montjuemhat) 130Marduk-apla-iddina II (Merodach-baladan)

52 76 108 157Marsimani 69 108 149Marum 47Media(n) Medes 74 106 107 109ndash111

263 346Mediterranean 26 90 96 309Medum 141Megiddo (see also Magidducirc) 8 12 97 98

175 179 186 187 189ndash192 194 196ndash199 201 204ndash208 320

Melidi 164ndash168Meluḫḫa (Kush) 129ndash131 137 138Memphis 103 104 127 131 136 141 142Menahem (Minihini) 12 189 262 264

269ndash272 274ndash280 282 287 289ndash

1 General index 405

291 294 296ndash299 304ndash306 316ndash326 328 329 332 333 341 342 347356ndash358 364 365 376

Menander 352 353Merodach-baladan rarr see Marduk-apla-iddi-

na IIMeshwesh (Ma) 139Mesopotamia Mesopotamian 21 91 156

163 221 234 249 285Metanna 324Micah 225 398Midas 91Mila Mergi 41Minihimme 324Miniḫini (see also Menahem) 332Mitatti 166 167Moab 97 387Montjuemhat 130Mosaic torah 338Moses 253 254Mount Lebanon 90Musasir 43 46Musri 131 134 136ndash138Muski 160 163 167

Nablus 357Nabu 49 51 52 91Nabucirc-mukin-zeri 349Nadab 271 305 311 312Nadbi-Yau 116Nahal Oren 24Naphtali 196 305 311 329Nebuchadnezzar II 27 233 262 344Necho 222 262 362Necho II 344Negev 309Nen-nesut (Herakleopolis) 141ndash143Nesubanebdjed 135New Year (Judean) 268 280 290ndash change of New Year 12 276ndash278Ni 130Niku I 130Nile 104 125 126 131 137ndash139 143Nimlot 141 143Nimmurau 103Nimrud rarr see Kalḫu

Nimshide(s) 304 314 315 317ndash319 323326 332 333

Nineveh 42 43 79 102ndash104 115 116120 191

Nippur 162North African coast 136Northern Kingdom passimNubian 97 98 362

Omri 69 216 217 275 292 293 298299 305ndash307 312ndash314 318 319 321323 332 356

Omride(s) 197 215 216 307 314 315319 332 333 340

Ophel Excavations 288Ophrah 225ldquoOracles Against the Nationsrdquo 387ndash389Orontes 61 63 77 85 112(O)so(rkon) 221Osorkon I 135 136 140Osorkon II 134ndash136 141 142Osorkon III 136 137 140ndash142Osorkon IV 93 137 142 218 261 343

362 365Osorkon of Per-Bast 142

Palestine 22 31 42 67 93 96 98 202310 329 348 359

Palti-Yau 119 120Paqaḫa (see also Pekah) 329 332Parda 167Pedubast 136 142Peftjauawybast 141Pekah (Paqaha) 42 47ndash49 189 231 259

264 267 269ndash276 279 280 283285ndash287 289 290 294ndash299 304ndash307 316 324 327ndash329 331ndash333 338339 341 342 347 349 356 358ndash361365 376 385

Pekahiah 189 269ndash276 279 280 287289 290 294 296ndash199 304ndash306327 329 347 358 365 376

Pentateuch 277Per-Bast (Bubastis) 134 141ndash143Per-Sekhem-kheper-re 141Peshitta 252

406 1 General index

Philistia Philistine(s) 67 99 161 162186 206 252 305 312 314 348 360387

Phoenicia Phoenician(s) 11 38 90 96134ndash136 143

Phrygia 91Piankhy (see also Piye) 93 127 128 139Pimay 136Pirlsquou 131 138Piye (Piankhy) 93 127 128 133 137 139ndash

143 218 362Psamtik I 127Ptah 141Ptolemais Hermiou 140Ptolemy 127Pul(u) 262 324 328 341Putubishti 130

Qal‛at el-Dibse 322Qal‛at Naǧm 322Qarqar 63ndash65 73 77 78 84 85 98

134 154 166 355Qarqūr 63Qindau (Kar-Sin) 110Qiseraya 119Que 38Qurdi-Assur-lamur 90 97

Rabshakeh 91Ramah 310 379Ramoth-Gilead 314Rapa-Yau 121Raphia 137 154 166Rapihu (see also Raphia) 69 166Ras Abu Hamid 312Rashi 214 215Rarsquoši 103Razon 296 298Razyān 360Rersquoe (Raia) 137Rehoboam 134 262 282 309Remaliah 259 297 331Rezin 259 283 349 358ndash360 365Rudamun 141 142

Sabacon (see also Shabaka) 125 132Ša-bare 106

Sais (Sau) 93 136 137 139 141ndash143218 260

Saite ruler 128 132 133 139Samarsquo 116 119 120Samrsquoal 38 163Samaria (Samerina) Samarians passimndash archaeological evidence 8 12 30 27 f

55 f 81 94 95 147ndash187 346 363235 346 363 375

ndash three-year siege 12 93 95 230 233238 242 244 336 345 347 351ndash353

ndash ldquotwo-conquests hypothesisrdquo 10 30 3195 153 155

ndash Yahwistic high priest 223ndash227SamarianEphraimite annals 244 303Šamaš 91Šamaš-bel-ketti 119Šamaš-belu-usur 108Šamaš-mušakšid-ernettiya (gate) 71Samerina (see also Samaria) 30 70 101

165 324 364Samuel (prophet see also Book of Samuel)

226Sanandaj 129Sarepta 96Sargon II passimSarrabanu 185 349 361Satrapie 322Scythians 25Sea of Galilee 329Sebaṣtye (see also Samaria) 346Sebichos 125 132Sehetepib(en)re Pedubast II (Putubishti of

Tanis) 130Sennacherib 39 42 47 50 52 53 68

73 94 106 134 135 147 154 156160ndash162 164 185 186 196 206 220221 235 236 239 240 246 247 252260 294 338 339 348 350

Sepharvaim 106 264Septuagint 6 211 212 223 227 241 252

258 260 261 317Shabaka (Sabacon) 125 127 128 130ndash

133 137 138 143Shabataka (Shebitqo) 125 127ndash133 138

143

1 General index 407

Shallum 271 272 274ndash276 289 290291 294 304ndash306 316ndash319 323325ndash328 332 333 356 357 376

Shalmaneser III 65 73 80 98 134 136203 236 315 355 356

Shalmaneser V passimShapiya 185Shechem 309Shepenwepet I 140 142Shephelah 161Shishak 127 134 262Shoshenq I 127 131 134 135 136 142Shoshenq III 136Shunem (Sulam) 200ldquoSibrsquoerdquo (now Rersquoe) 137Sidon Sidonian 90 135Simri 305Sicircn 77 119ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo 213ndash215 217 305 308

333 340 341Sicircn-sarru-iskun 52Sinai 99 134Sinu (Tell Siyanu) 67Sippar 106 107 162Solomon 198 284 309 310 332 357

396Solomonic empire 322Soʾ 93 136 137 218ndash221 223 234 255

259ndash261 353 362Southern Kingdom 2 7 9 13 388 395ndash

397Sudan 125 143Sulam (Shunem) 200Sutians 162synchronismsndash Assyrian and Babylonian 270ndash Hezekiah ndash Hoshea 229 230 239 241ndash

243 246 252 253 262 263 272ndash Israel and Judah 241 268 271 274

276 278 279 283 287 318 339 347348

Syria Syrian 42 43 61 317 321 352359 380

Syrian Desert 110Syria-Palestine Syro-Palestine 152 342

343 349 352

Syro-Ephraimite War 2 7 9 173 328 338341 359 360 379 380 385 388

Ṣihucirc 103Ṣihuru 103Simirra 60 61 64 76ndash78 85 90 189Šilkanni 130 131 137 138 143Šinuhtu 80Šuandahul 166 167Šumma-ilani 116

Talsquoanach 186Tabal 324Taharka (Tar(a)cos) 125 127 128 133 135Takeloth II 134 136 262Takeloth III 141 142Tamudi 69 71 108 149Tang-i Var 129 131 132 138Tanis 93 130 131 134ndash136 142 143Tanutamun 127Tappuah (Tell aš-ŠēḫAbū Zarad) 320 322

323 326 357Tapsake Thapsa[cus] 322Tar(a)cos (rarr see also Taharka) 125Tarditu-Assur 108Tarquinia 136Tarsicirc 120Tefnakht 93 127 128 131 133 137 139

141 143 218 260 362Tel Dan 289 314 315 330 331Tel lsquoEin Jezreel 197Tel Hadid 204 207Tel Jezreel 197 198Tell Abil el-Qamh (Abel-beth-maacah) 329Tell Abu Charaz 316Tell Abu Hawam 186Tell Abu Marya (Apku) 38Tell Asharneh 61 62 63 65Tell aš-ŠēḫAbū Zarad (Tappuah) 323 357Tell el-Fār‛ah (Tirzah) 180 183 310 317

320 325Tell el-Ful 26Tell el-Maqlub 316Tell el-MelatTell Malat 312Tell el-ʻOreimeh (Chinnereth) 330Tell el-Qadī (Dan) 311Tell el-Qedaḥ (Hazor) 329Tell en-Nalsquoameh 329

408 1 General index

Tell Halaf (see also Guzana) 105 118Tell Jemmeh 183Tell Keisan 186Tell Muqdam 142Tell Qudadi (Tell esh-Shuna) 26Tel Qedesh 329temple of Karnak 134temple of Kawa 135temple(s) of Yahweh 226Tentamun 135Tepe Giyan (see also Kar-Šarruken Ḫarḫar)

110Tep-ihu 141Teudjoi (el-Hiba) 141Thebaid 140 141Thebes Theban 130 134 139 140 142

143Tibni 292 298 306 313 314 332 333Tiglath-pileser III passimTil-Garimmu 164Tiphsah 320ndash323 325 326 333 357Tirhaka 223 260Tirzah (Tell el-Fār‛ah) 262 310 312ndash314

317ndash323 325ndash327 333 356 357Tjeny (Girga) 140 143trade(rs) 11 26 27 31 96 97 108 135

136 143 191 192 200 205 206 208312 328

Transeuphratene 57Transjordan Transjordanian 297 298

316ndash319 321 328 341 342 349 359360

Trisagion 395Tubail (Itto-Baal) 296Turkey 43 105Turushpa 185TyreTyros Tyrian 38 90 96 97 135 153

185 189 252 296 324 352

Ululayu (see also Shalmaneser V) 36Upper Tigris region 106 205Urartu Urartian 42 43 46 91 158 160

163 185 203

Ursa 158 159Uruk 52Usermaetre 142Us irihiuhurti 119 120Uzziah 286 289ndash291 293ndash296 299 359

Vale of Ayalon 42Valerian 69Via Maris 26 31 93 191 200 207Vulgate 252

Waset 140Wenamun 135

Yaba 39Yahweh YHWH 58 116 120ndash122 213

215 217 224 226 253 254 258ndash261338 340 341

Yahwistic cult 214 225Yahwistic high priest rarr see SamariaYahwistic names 28 58 313 327 332Yahwism 381Yamani 67 129ndash132 137 138 343Yarkon 26Yāsūf (Jashib) 316Yaṭbite 47Yau-birsquodi (see also Ilu-birsquodi) 58 60ndash67

73 74 76ndash80 82 85 86 112Yaudi 359Yau-ga 116Yehud 381Yeno‛am 329Yoqnelsquoam 186Zagros 42 64 97 110 111 166 192 205Zaza 120Zechariah 213 241 269 271 272 274ndash

276 289 291 294 298 304 305 307316 317 356 357 376

Zedekiah 234 249 262 277 282 344Zikirtu 166 167Zimri 298 306 312ndash314 318 321 323

327 332 333

1 General index 409

2 Words

Akkadian3-šuacutemeš 117 378esēru 154 160 185 186 236ḫammārsquou 69

ḫepucirc 82 154 156 164 167 335 350 363ldquokalucircrdquo rarr see 3-šuacutemešnasīku 118

Hebrewרסא ʾsr 154 236 344

ephod 223ndash226יבתתישפחה 294

teraphim 223ndash226ידג־ןב 318 319

דכל lākad 154 233 237 239 346

החנמ minḫāh 222 261 346הכנ 306 320 321הלע ʿālāh 222 233 242 256 261 263

344 345רשק qaeligšaeligr 258 306 338שילש šālicircš 298 327 376

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-021

3 Texts

Hebrew Bible Old TestamentGen 4924 396

Exod 122 277Exod 147 327Exod 154 327Exod 212 5 26 27 294Exod 2314ndash19 277Exod 257 224Exod 284 15 28 224Exod 295 224Exod 309 222Exod 3418ndash26 277Exod 359 27 224Exod 398 21 224Exod 4029 222

Lev 1420 222Lev 231ndash14 277Lev 258ndash9 277Lev 273 326

Num 1311 318

Deut 34 13ndash14 328Deut 1512 13 18 294Deut 161ndash7 277Deut 281 15 254

Josh 1326 310Josh 178 323Josh 1825 310Josh 198 29 36 310Josh 207 330Josh 2132 330Josh 2223 222

Judg 118 252Judg 827 225 226Judg 1319 222Judg 1621 25 344Judg 17ndash18 225 226Judg 175 224

Judg 1814 17 18 20 224Judg 219ndash14 316

1Sam 218 2261Sam 111ndash10 3161Sam 137 3181Sam 1523 2251Sam 1725 2941Sam 239ndash12 2241Sam 245 3181Sam 2522 34 3141Sam 307ndash8 2241Sam 3111 316

2Sam 54 2842Sam 614 2262Sam 1944 2222Sam 2336 318

1Kgs 413 3281Kgs 54 322 3571Kgs 634 3301Kgs 637ndash38 2771Kgs 911 3301Kgs 922 3271Kgs 1028 971Kgs 11ndash14 309 3101Kgs 1126ndash1430 3101Kgs 1129ndash30 3111Kgs 1142 2841Kgs 12ndash2Kgs 17 3061Kgs 1215 3111Kgs 1228ndash30 2181Kgs 142 4 3111Kgs 149 3401Kgs 1410 3141Kgs 1417 3571Kgs 1425 241 2621Kgs 1426 2211Kgs 15 311 313 3331Kgs 15ndash17 3081Kgs 152 279

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-022

1Kgs 1511 2831Kgs 1516 3101Kgs 1517 2621Kgs 1519 3111Kgs 1520 311 329 3301Kgs 1521 318 3571Kgs 1525 271 2791Kgs 1527ndash28 306 311 312 3561Kgs 1529 3111Kgs 1532 310 3121Kgs 1533 271 312 318 3571Kgs 16 292 2981Kgs 161ndash4 3141Kgs 166 279 305 318 3571Kgs 168ndash9 279 318 3571Kgs 169ndash10 306 313 3561Kgs 1611 3131Kgs 1612ndash13 312 3141Kgs 1615 292 312 318 3571Kgs 1616 3131Kgs 1617 312 318 3571Kgs 1618 321 3271Kgs 1620 306 3181Kgs 1621 292 3131Kgs 1622 292 3061Kgs 1623 275 292 3181Kgs 1625 216 3401Kgs 1628 293 3051Kgs 1629 2921Kgs 1630 216 3401Kgs 1633 216 3401Kgs 17ndash19 2171Kgs 1829 36 2221Kgs 211 1971Kgs 2121 3141Kgs 2122 3111Kgs 2125 2171Kgs 2237 3051Kgs 2241ndash44 283 2931Kgs 2252ndash54 216 276 293 340

2Kgs 10 212 2292Kgs 117 2922Kgs 118 216 275 292 2932Kgs 31ndash3 276 293 3402Kgs 313ndash14 3402Kgs 320 222

2Kgs 6ndash7 3402Kgs 72 17 19 3272Kgs 8 2922Kgs 812 321 322 3572Kgs 815 3212Kgs 816ndash18 280 281 284 292

2932Kgs 822 24 2922Kgs 825ndash27 281 2932Kgs 828 3152Kgs 9ndash10 293 314 3152Kgs 9ndash14 and 15ndash19 2122Kgs 98 3142Kgs 99 3112Kgs 914 3062Kgs 922 3402Kgs 924ndash27 314 317 327 3312Kgs 10 2892Kgs 109 3062Kgs 1011 3122Kgs 1025 3272Kgs 1026ndash27 3402Kgs 1028ndash31 212 3402Kgs 1032 3172Kgs 1035 3052Kgs 11 2892Kgs 1119 3062Kgs 12 2892Kgs 122 2762Kgs 123 2832Kgs 127 2412Kgs 1218 2622Kgs 1220 3062Kgs 1228ndash32 3402Kgs 131ndash9 and 10ndash13 276 289 3052Kgs 1314ndash21 2122Kgs 141ndash2 276 2902Kgs 141ndash20 2892Kgs 143 2832Kgs 145 3262Kgs 1417 290 291 2942Kgs 1419ndash22 280 281 286 289

3062Kgs 1422ndash29 2892Kgs 1423 290 291 2942Kgs 1425 356 357

414 3 Texts

2Kgs 15 13 283 286 289291 293 299 303304 306ndash308 332333 355

2Kgs 15ndash16 3 47 3412Kgs 15ndash17 3032Kgs 15ndash18 5 12 53 267

269ndash271 273ndash276279 281 282 286288 289 299

2Kgs 151 271 275 279 286290

2Kgs 151ndash7 2892Kgs 152 273 2942Kgs 153 2832Kgs 155 281 2942Kgs 156ndash8 2862Kgs 157 2952Kgs 158 271 275 279 291

3162Kgs 158ndash12 2892Kgs 158ndash31 3762Kgs 159 213 277 3052Kgs 1510 303 306 316 3562Kgs 1512 3172Kgs 1513ndash15 271 275 286

289ndash291 3562Kgs 1514 262 303 3182Kgs 1515 306 318 3562Kgs 1516 303 318 320 321

3572Kgs 1517 272 275 286 290

2912Kgs 1517ndash22 2892Kgs 1517ndash1620 3412Kgs 1518 3052Kgs 1519 264 296 324 325

328 357 3642Kgs 1519ndash20 303 341 3422Kgs 1520 326 358 3642Kgs 1522 306 3272Kgs 1523 271 272 275 286

2902Kgs 1523ndash26 290 2962Kgs 1524 3052Kgs 1525 42 47 48 303 316

318 327 356 376

2Kgs 1527 271 273 275 279286 296 329 339

2Kgs 1527ndash31 290 2962Kgs 1528 3052Kgs 1529 154 190 214 264

305 311 317 328330 337 341 342360 365

2Kgs 1529ndash30 303 3382Kgs 1530 231 272 283 286

287 296 329 331337 339 348 352356 360 361 365

2Kgs 1532 272 273 275 279286 296

2Kgs 1532ndash33 2852Kgs 1532ndash38 2892Kgs 1533 273 288 294ndash296

3392Kgs 1534 283 2862Kgs 1535 2832Kgs 1537 298 328 3602Kgs 16 7 9 212 3592Kgs 161 272 273 279 3392Kgs 162 288 2952Kgs 162bndash4 2832Kgs 163 2832Kgs 165 358ndash360 365 379

3852Kgs 165ndash9 283 338 3482Kgs 166 1542Kgs 167ndash9 341 3422Kgs 167 10 3282Kgs 169 3602Kgs 1610ndash18 2832Kgs 1619ndash20 3362Kgs 17 12 13 75 105 211

212 226 227 235240 243 305

2Kgs 17 and 18 38 52 532Kgs 171 272 275 280 296

339 348 3642Kgs 171ndash2 2632Kgs 171ndash4 2902Kgs 171ndash6 18 20 29 153 213

226 249 335 336347

3 Texts 415

2Kgs 171ndash24 42Kgs 172 213ndash215 217 218

227 234 236 340341

2Kgs 173 233 237 238 242263 342 345 352361 363

2Kgs 173ndash4 12 230ndash232 234237ndash239 258 338

2Kgs 173ndash5 239 262 345 3802Kgs 173ndash6 10 12 37 92

229ndash231 240243ndash245 247ndash249251 255 262337ndash339 342ndash344347 349 351ndash353

2Kgs 174 94 186 218ndash220222 227 261 338352 362 363 365

2Kgs 174ndash5 2332Kgs 174ndash6 3522Kgs 175 93 95 153 233

238 263 345 3632Kgs 175ndash6 12 232 238 239

240 242 244 245345 351

2Kgs 176 154 233 235 237242 263 272 346352 363

2Kgs 177 2122Kgs 177ndash20 292Kgs 177ndash23 2492Kgs 177ndash41 2262Kgs 179 245 249 2522Kgs 1717 223ndash225 2272Kgs 1721ndash23 292Kgs 1724 106 245 263 346

3522Kgs 1724ndash28 3392Kgs 1724ndash41 2262Kgs 1726 27 1132Kgs 1729ndash31 2452Kgs 1731 2202Kgs 18 75 2422Kgs 18ndash20 2892Kgs 181 241 242 272 273

275 279 339 348

2Kgs 181ndash12 42Kgs 184 2522Kgs 187 252 264 338 3392Kgs 188 2522Kgs 189ndash10 10 239ndash242 248

263 272 279 345363

2Kgs 189ndash11 12 18 20 29229ndash231 238 240242ndash244 251337ndash339 346 348

2Kgs 189ndash12 37 231 262 337338 345

2Kgs 1810 154 239ndash241 294304

2Kgs 1810ndash11 2632Kgs 1811 2392Kgs 1812 245 249 2522Kgs 1813 235 239 240 243

252 294 3482Kgs 1813ndash16 338 339 3452Kgs 1813ndash1937 2392Kgs 1814ndash16 2392Kgs 1821 24 2212Kgs 1831ndash32 922Kgs 1834 73 2352Kgs 199 2232Kgs 1922 3962Kgs 1937 2202Kgs 201 2432Kgs 213 2172Kgs 216 223 2832Kgs 2123ndash24 3062Kgs 23 2772Kgs 234 2252Kgs 2324 2252Kgs 2329 222 262 3622Kgs 2333 262 3442Kgs 2334 286 3442Kgs 248 2792Kgs 2412 2342Kgs 2417 286 3442Kgs 251 2412Kgs 257 234 262 3442Kgs 258 2412Kgs 2527 2622Kgs 2527ndash30 344

416 3 Texts

1Chr 56 31Chr 526 3 3411Chr 661 330

2Chr 161 2792Chr 214 3262Chr 26 2862Chr 2621 2942Chr 272 2862Chr 285ndash6 3602Chr 285ndash8 3792Chr 2816ndash21 32Chr 301ndash12 2132Chr 3311 234 2622Chr 366 233 234 2372Chr 369 279

Ezra 236 311

Neh 739 311Neh 1133 310

Esth 16 330

Job 319 294

Pss 201 396Pss 246 396Pss 468 12 396Pss 7122 396Pss 7510 396Pss 767 396Pss 7841 396Pss 812 5 396Pss 849 396Pss 891 396Pss 947 396Pss 1322 5 396Pss 1465 396

Cant 514 330

Isa 1ndash39 383 391 395Isa 11 286 388Isa 13 394Isa 124 396Isa 2ndash4 391

Isa 21 388Isa 21ndash4 391Isa 23 391 396Isa 25 391 396Isa 26 391ndash393 396Isa 51ndash7 394Isa 57 393Isa 519 395Isa 525 383 384Isa 526ndash29 383 384Isa 6 395Isa 6 and 8 392Isa 6ndash9 9Isa 6ndash12 386Isa 6ndash19 391Isa 61 286 388Isa 61ndash11 394Isa 7 3 9 359 385Isa 7ndash8 7Isa 71 286 358 360 365Isa 71ndash9 379Isa 71ndash17 394Isa 72 358 359 365Isa 74 360Isa 75 358 360 365Isa 78 360Isa 78ndash9a 390Isa 717 394Isa 8 393Isa 81ndash4 385 389 393Isa 81ndash8 394Isa 81ndash10 3Isa 85ndash8a 393Isa 811ndash17 394Isa 816ndash17 392Isa 817 391ndash393Isa 818 392Isa 823 3 330Isa 9 387Isa 96 286Isa 97 385 386 391 393Isa 97ndash20 383 384Isa 98 385Isa 911 387Isa 914 384Isa 916 389Isa 918 389

3 Texts 417

Isa 919ndash20 298Isa 920 385 387Isa 104 389Isa 105ndash9 389Isa 106 389Isa 109 3 390Isa 1010ndash12 389Isa 1011 390Isa 1013ndash15 389Isa 1020 391Isa 1021 391Isa 1027ndash32 4Isa 1111ndash12 386Isa 1113ndash14 386 387Isa 1115ndash16 386Isa 13ndash23 387Isa 131 388Isa 133 222Isa 1316 18 321Isa 141 391Isa 144bndash21 4Isa 1428 388Isa 1428ndash32 387Isa 15ndash16 387Isa 17 387Isa 171 387Isa 171ndash3 3 388Isa 172 387Isa 173a 387Isa 174 391 393Isa 174ndash6 388Isa 176 391Isa 181 389Isa 19 387Isa 20 385Isa 201 4Isa 2312 222Isa 24ndash27 388Isa 276 9 391Isa 28ndash31 389Isa 281 389Isa 281ndash4 388Isa 283 389Isa 2922 391Isa 2923 391Isa 302ndash5 221Isa 308 392

Isa 3011 12 25 395Isa 311 395Isa 311ndash2 221Isa 36ndash39 385Isa 361 240Isa 3738 220Isa 381 243Isa 40 383Isa 40ndash48 391Isa 40ndash55 386Isa 4926 396Isa 576 222Isa 586 294Isa 6016 396Isa 663 222

Jer 1412 222Jer 236 286Jer 251 241Jer 281 241Jer 3129 222Jer 321 241Jer 349ndash11 14 16 294Jer 361 9 241Jer 362 277Jer 377ndash8 221Jer 39 241Jer 5029 396Jer 515 396Jer 524 241Jer 5212 241

Ezek 81 241Ezek 1711ndash21 249Ezek 201 241Ezek 2121 224Ezek 241 241Ezek 261 241Ezek 291 17 241Ezek 292ndash7 221Ezek 3020 241Ezek 311 241Ezek 321 17 241Ezek 3321 241

Hos 11 286Hos 12bndash25 207

418 3 Texts

Hos 14ndash5 200Hos 16ndash9 371Hos 21ndash5 371Hos 22 200Hos 213ndash19 371Hos 222ndash25 371Hos 224 200 207Hos 31ndash5 371Hos 34 224Hos 41ndash19 371Hos 51 371Hos 58ndash14 379Hos 63 371Hos 68ndash11 371Hos 71 371Hos 73ndash7 375 376Hos 78ndash11 380Hos 711 221 380Hos 712ndash16 371Hos 81 371Hos 91ndash4 371Hos 93 380Hos 99ndash17 371Hos 910ndash17 376Hos 101ndash8 378Hos 101ndash14 371

Hos 105ndash6 341Hos 105ndash8 377 378Hos 1014 321Hos 111ndash5 376Hos 112ndash5 371Hos 115 11 380Hos 116ndash11 371Hos 121 380Hos 121ndash15 371Hos 122 221Hos 131 3ndash13 15 371Hos 134 371Hos 141 321 371Hos 143ndash6 371Hos 149ndash10 371Hos 712ndash16 371

Amos 1ndash2 389Amos 11 286Amos 113 321Amos 522 222Amos 62 3

Zech 71 241Zech 102 224 225Zech 145 286

Apocrypha1Macc 517 20 55 330 Jdt 155 330

Septuagint and related manuscripts20 3224Kgdms 1429 3054Kgdms 258 241A 220 322Adagger 322AntiocheneAntiochian text 6 211 212

214 261 274 275 305 311 317 323326 338 340

Antiochene mss 19 82 93 and 108 275B 219 220 322Codex A 279Codex Alexandrinus 275Codex B 279Codex V 279Codex Vaticanus 311

GB 296GL 296kaige revision 211 212 216 222 258 261L 219 220 223Ldagger 322La115 (Palimpsestus Vindobonensis) 211

212 214 223 260LaM (also known as La91-95) 212 214 216Lucianic recension 6 212 216 292 357LXXL 296minuscule 52 279minuscule 92 279minuscule 121 279minuscule 106 279minuscule 120 279

3 Texts 419

minuscule 127 274 275 279minuscule 130 279minuscule 134 279minuscule 158 275minuscule 245 274 275minuscule 247 279minuscule 314 279minuscule 489 279minuscule 501 279

minuscule 554 279minuscule 700 275Palimpsestus Vindobonensis rarr see La115

Septuagint (LXX) 6 211 212 216 217222ndash224 227 241 296 322 325 327328 347 357

V 220 275Vetus Latina 6

Classical and Ancient Christian writingsEusebius Chronicon 268Lucifer of Cagliari 225

Sulpicius Severus I Chr 471 219

Dead Sea Scrolls4QXIIc 3714QXIId 371

4QXIIg 371

JosephusAJAnt IX 132 352AJAnt IX 15 38

AJAnt IX 16 38AJAnt IXf 268

Mishnah Talmud and related literatureB Bat 121b 213Giṭ 88a 213

Taʿan 30bndash31a 213

Other Rabbinic worksSeder Olam Rabah 268

Aramaean inscriptionsKAI no 233 l 15 350 ldquoTel Dan Stelerdquo 289 314 315 331

OstracaLachish 27 Samaria 27 96 237

Seals and seal impressionsfrom Egypt 177of Hezekiah 288

of Hoshea 238

420 3 Texts

Ancient Near Eastern texts

Historiographical texts

Assyrian Eponym List and Chronicle 3 437 39 50 57 82ndash84 86 95 154 338348 349 351 352 361

Babylonian Chronicles 3ndash5 10 3036ndash38 60 83 95 152 153 238 240335 349ndash351 363

ndash i 19ndash23 349ndash i 24ndash28 30 37 38 57 82 95 148 167

363ndash i 29ndash31 38 351ndash ii 24ndash25 350Babylonian King List A 36Ptolemaic Canon 36

Assyrian royal inscriptions

Shalmaneser III

ldquoBlack Obeliskrdquo 134 315ndash epigraph (RIMA 3 A010288) 356ldquoCalah Bullsrdquo 315ldquoKurbarsquoil Statuerdquo 315ldquoKurkh Inscriptionrdquo (RIMA 3 A01022) ii

91ndash92 73 355ldquoMarble Slabrdquo 315

Adad-nerari III

ldquoTell al-Rimah Stelerdquo (RIMA 3 A01047)l 8 356

Tiglath-pileser III

ldquo(Calah) Annalsrdquo 40 41 45 47 48 190296 305 357

ndash Ann 3 (RINAP 1 27) 296ndash l 3 41 357ndash Ann 13 (RINAP 1 14) 296ndash l 8 235ndash l 10 41 269 324 357ndash Ann 18 (RINAP 1 22)ndash ll 1primendash8primea 41 47ndash l 3prime 190ndash Ann 23 (RINAP 1 20) 328ndash ll 8primendash9prime 185

ndash Ann 24 (RINAP 1 21)ndash ll 1primendash11prime 41 47ndash l 3prime 190ndash Ann 27 (RINAP 1 32) 296ndash l 2 41 269 357

ldquoIran Stelerdquo (RINAP 1 35) iii 5 41 269296 324 357

ldquoSummary Inscriptionsrdquo (RINAP 1 39ndash52)41 348

ndash Summ 1 (RINAP 1 39) ll 23ndash24 185ndash Summ 4 (RINAP 1 42)ndash l 6prime 190ndash l 11prime 331ndash ll 15primendash19prime 42 48 190 269 324 361ndash Summ 7 (RINAP 1 47)ndash l 23 185ndash rev 7ndash13 349ndash rev 11prime 286ndash Summ 9 (RINAP 1 49) 328 331ndash rev 9ndash11 190 269 349 361ndash Summ 13 (RINAP 1 44) 328 331ndash ll 17primendash18prime 42 269 349 361

Shalmaneser V

ldquoLion weightsrdquo 37

Sargon II

ldquoAnnalsrdquo rarr see ldquoKhorsabad Annalsrdquo

ldquoAshur Charterrdquo 38 43 44 51 60 61 6376 84

ndash ll 16ndash28 59 64 71 150 351

ldquoBorowski Stelerdquo 79ndash side B 5ndash12 80

ldquoBull Inscriptionrdquo 45ndash l 21 81 149 185

ldquoCyprus Stelerdquo 78ndash ll 51ndash65 79

3 Texts 421

ldquoHama Stelerdquo 112

ldquoJuniper Palace Inscriptionrdquo 66ndash68 73ndash ll 7ndash8 66

ldquo(Khorsabad) Annalsrdquo 12 44 67 69 7073ndash76 84 86 108 113 147ndash187 351

ndash ll 10ndash18 70ndash72 95 99 114 149 235335 351

ndash ll 23ndash25 76 114ndash ll 66ndash67 235ndash ll 109ndash115 110ndash ll 120ndash123 108 235ndash ll 210ndash215 110 235ndash ll 380ndash381 235

ldquoKhorsabad Cylinderrdquo 51 68 70 352ndash ll 19ndash20 68f 149 185 235ndash l 25 69

ldquoKhorsabad Display Inscriptionrdquo 45 4976 77 113 129

ndash ll 23ndash25 30 71 75 93 149 157 351352

ndash ll 33ndash36 60 64 65 78 112ndash ll 55ndash57 235ndash ll 64ndash65 110ndash ll 115ndash116 235ndash ll 138ndash139 235

ldquo(Khorsabad) Display Inscription XIVrdquo l 1545 80 129 149 165 166 185

ldquoLetter to the God Assurrdquo (ldquoSargonrsquos EighthCampaignrdquo) 43 44 46 68

ldquoMosul Annalsrdquondash ll 4ndash20 77ndash ll 5 14ndash15 18 60ndash ll 6ndash11 63

ldquoNajafehabad Stelerdquo 64ndash66 76ndash rev 4ndash13 64 f

ldquoNimrud Prismrdquo 72ndash76 86 93 99 364ndash iv 25ndash32 378ndash iv 25ndash41 71 72 149 335 351

ndash iv 31ndash33 49 165 166 185ndash iv 31ndash41 114ndash iv 33ndash34 157 158 165 166ndash iv 37ndash39 185

ldquoNineveh Cylinderrdquo 79

ldquoTang-i Var Inscriptionrdquo 129 131 132 138

ldquoTell Asharneh Stelerdquo 44 61 63 65 66ndash B 1primendash12prime and C 1primendash9prime 62ndash B 11prime 60

ldquoTell Tayinat Stelerdquo 44 63 66 351ndash ll 1primendash10prime 63fndash ll 5primendash7prime 60 77

ldquoThreshold Inscription no 4rdquo ll 31ndash3246 81 149 185 364

Sennacherib

RINAP 3 4 ll 52ndash58 53RINAP 3 22 iii 27bndash49 53RINAP 3 1015 67 68

Esarhaddon

RINAP 4 9 iprime 6primendash17prime 103

Letters and administrative texts

Assur

StAT 2 53 119

Dur-Katlimmu

BATSH 6 37 121BATSH 6 110b 121StCh 1 185 no 14 121

Kalḫu

CTN 3 121 117 378Nimrud Horse Lists 98SAA 19 22 90SAA 19 8ndash11 37

422 3 Texts

Nineveh

ABL 301 91SAA 1 1 91SAA 1 110 98SAA 1 220 164

SAA 1 255 375SAA 6 34 116SAA 15 280 118SAA 16 63 120SAA 20 55 111

Other TextsEgyptian royal inscriptionsndash Osorkon 142ndash Piye 139ndash142

ldquoReport of Wenamunrdquo 135

Baal Cycle 295

3 Texts 423

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fuumlr die alttestamentlicheWissenschaft

Herausgegeben von John Barton Reinhard G Kratz Nathan MacDonald Carol A Newsom and Markus Witte

Band 511



Edited by Shuichi Hasegawa Christoph Levin and Karen Radner


ISBN 978-3-11-056416-7e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-056660-4e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-056418-1ISSN 0934-2575

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames Hasegawa Shuichi 1971- editor | Levin Christoph 1950- editor | Radner Karen editorTitle The last days of the Kingdom of Israel edited by Shuichi Hasegawa Christoph Levin Karen RadnerDescription First edition | Berlin Boston Walter de Gruyter [2018] | Series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ISSN 0934-2575 Band 511Identifiers LCCN 2018023384 | ISBN 9783110564167Subjects LCSH Jews--History--953-586 BC | Assyria--History | Bible Old Testament--Criticism interpretation etc | Assyro-Babylonian literature--History and criticismClassification LCC DS1216 L37 2018 | DDC 93303--dc23 LC record available at httpslccnlocgov2018023384

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen NationalbibliothekThe Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografiedetailed bibliografic data are available on the Internet at httpdnbdnbde

copy 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH BerlinBostonDruck und Bindung CPI books GmbH Leck

wwwdegruytercom


Table of Contents

Shuichi HasegawaThe Last Days of the Northern Kingdom of Israel

Introducing the Proceedings of a Multi-Disciplinary Conference 1


Bob BeckingHow to Encounter an Historical Problem

ldquo722ndash720 BCErdquo as a Case Study 17

Part II Approaching the Fall of Samaria from ContemporaryAssyrian and Egyptian Sources

Jamie NovotnyContextualizing the Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel What Can AssyrianOfficial Inscriptions Tell Us 35

Eckart FrahmSamaria Hamath and Assyriarsquos Conquests in the Levant in the Late 720sBCE

The Testimony of Sargon IIrsquos Inscriptions 55

Frederick Mario FalesWhy Israel

Reflections on Shalmaneser Vrsquos and Sargon IIrsquos Grand Strategy for theLevant 87

Karen RadnerThe ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo in the Context of the Resettlement Programme ofthe Assyrian Empire 101

Robert G MorkotThe End of the Kingdom of Israel A View from the Nile Valley 125


Ron E TappyThe Annals of Sargon II and the Archaeology of Samaria Rhetorical ClaimsEmpirical Evidence 147

Norma FranklinMegiddo and Jezreel Reflected in the Dying Embers of the Northern Kingdomof Israel 189

Part IV Working with the Book of Kings the Text

Timo TekoniemiBetween Two Differing Editions Some Notable Text-Critical Variants in2 Kings 17 211

Danrsquoel KahnThe Fall of Samaria an Analysis of the Biblical Sources 229

Christoph LevinIn Search of the Original Biblical Record of the Assyrian Conquest ofSamaria 251

Part V Working with the Book of Kings the ChronologicalFramework

Kristin Weingart2 Kings 15ndash 18 a Chronological Conundrum 267

Steven L McKenzieThe Last Days of Israel Chronological Considerations 289

Part VI Working with the Book of Kings the Narrative

Christian FrevelWicked Usurpers and the Doom of Samaria

Further Views on the Angle of 2 Kings 15ndash17 303

VI Table of Contents

Michael PietschHoshea ben Elah the Last King of Israel Narrative and History in 2 Kings171ndash6 335

Georg HentschelDid Hoshea of Israel Continue the Foreign Policy of HisPredecessors 355


Martti NissinenThe Book of Hosea and the Last Days of the Northern Kingdom

The Methodological Problem 369

H G M WilliamsonIsaiah and the Fall of the Kingdom of Israel 383

Indices

1 General index 401

2 Words 411

3 Texts 413

Table of Contents VII

Shuichi Hasegawa

The Last Days of the Northern Kingdomof Israel

Introducing the Proceedings of a Multi-Disciplinary Conference

1 The Conference

The Northern Kingdom of Israel ruled the northern part of the Southern Levantfor about 200 years from the mid-tenth century to the late eighth century BCEThe kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian Empire after the latter had persis-tently conducted military campaigns into the Levant from the mid-ninth centuryBCE onwards

Despite considerable scholarly efforts over many years the events of the lastthree decades of the Northern Kingdom of Israel are still hidden beneath the veilof history A number of questions remain unresolved the status of the kingdomafter Tiglath-pileser III king of Assyria annexed its larger part in 732 BCE thedate of the conquest and the identity of the conqueror of Samaria the capitalof the kingdom the fate of Hoshea the Northern Kingdomrsquos last king or the cir-cumstances under which Samaria joined the anti-Assyrian coalition after its fallOne of the primary reasons for this situation lies in the discrepancies to be foundin the available textual sources namely the Hebrew Bible (chiefly Book of KingsIsaiah and Hosea) and the Assyrian material most importantly royal inscriptionsand letters from the state correspondence The gaps in the sources are not easy tobridge also because Bible Studies and Assyriology are separate disciplines withdistinct agendas and methodologies

In the period in question the Northern Kingdom played a significant rolewithin and beyond the Levant Elucidating its fall is not only critical for recon-structing the history of the kingdom itself but can also contribute greatly to ourunderstanding of biblical and ancient Near Eastern historiography for it is ex-tremely rare that the textual sources both of the conqueror and of the conqueredare at our disposal In addition the modern state of Israel is the most exhaustive-ly and most intensively excavated region in the Middle East and this provides uswith much relevant archaeological information To investigate the period inquestion is also meaningful in order to reconstruct Assyriarsquos diplomatic and mili-tary strategies toward its client kingdoms and its policies in its administrativeprovinces Our topic serves to elucidate the structure of imperial domination

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-001

of this first empire of the ancient Near East and to determine the difference in itstreatment between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom ofJudah which persisted as an Assyrian client state and was never integrated intothe Assyrian provincial system

To be in any position to attempt to reconstruct ldquowhat really happenedrdquo in thelast days of the Northern Kingdom one must first analyse all these sources crit-ically and independently and only then move on to synthesizing the resultsOnly in this way do we stand a chance to elucidate the background the courseand the results of the Syro-Ephraimite War and to determine the date of the fallof Samaria the identity of its conqueror and the aftermath of the conquest Thecritical analysis of the available sources was therefore the remit of the conferenceldquoThe Last Days of the Northern Kingdom of Israelrdquo whose proceedings consti-tute the present volume

The multi-disciplinary conference was organized by Shuichi Hasegawa (Rik-kyo University Tokyo) Christoph Levin and Karen Radner (both LMU Munich) inorder to elucidate ldquoThe Last Days of the Northern Kingdom of Israelrdquo and to ex-plore with fresh eyes key issues connected with the Fall of Samaria and its nar-rative that have fuelled scholarly debates since the 19th century It was held at thebuilding of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich from 15ndash 17 March2017 and brought together speakers from Finland Germany Israel Italy Japanthe Netherlands the United Kingdom and the United States It received generousfunding from a Fostering Joint International Research grant of the Japan Societyfor the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI Subject No 15KK0061) awarded to Ha-segawa with additional financial support provided by the Carl Friedrich von Sie-mens Stiftung and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation the latter throughthe Alexander von Humboldt chair in the Ancient History of the Near and MiddleEast held by Radner (who hosted Hasegawa at LMU Munich during the academicyear 201617) We wish to thank Denise Bolton for carefully proof-reading andwhere necessary language-editing the contributions to this volume Alexa Bar-telmus and Nikola Wenner for compiling the index and De Gruyterrsquos Sabina Dab-rowski Katrin Mittmann and Sophie Wagenhofer for their support care andspeed in preparing this publication

2 Introducing the Sources

It will be helpful to offer a short summary of the types and nature of the avail-able sources and to briefly highlight the problems relating to them I will use thefollowing categories (1) extra-biblical sources (2) biblical sources and (3) ar-chaeological data

2 Shuichi Hasegawa

21 Extra-Biblical Sources

Part II of this volume is devoted to this material which includes (1) Assyrian royalinscriptions (2) the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle (3) the Babylonian Chroniclesand (4) various Assyrian archival texts

211 Assyrian Royal Inscriptions

In the second half of the eighth century BCE the rulers of the Assyrian Empireconducted a number of military campaigns into the Levant and recorded ac-counts of these campaigns in their royal annals and other official inscriptionsThese mention information such as the names of the kings of the Northern King-dom their tribute and details of the Assyrian campaigns against the kingdomThe significance of these inscriptions lies in the fact that they were composedshortly after the time of the described events

Three monarchs ruled the Assyrian Empire during the last years of theNorthern Kingdom of Israel Tiglath-pileser III reigned between 745ndash727 BCEhis son and crown prince Shalmaneser V succeeded him and ruled from 727 to722 BCE when his brother Sargon II took the throne by force and reigned from722 to 705 BCEsup1

After a period of decline the ascent of Tiglath-pileser to the throne of Assyriamarked a new stage in the empirersquos history Dozens of his royal inscriptions sur-vive although most of them in a very fragmentary state of preservation Thiskingrsquos extensive military campaigns are recorded in annals that present hisdeeds in chronological order and in summary inscriptions that summarize hisactivities according to geographical considerationssup2

The Hebrew Bible refers to Tiglath-pileser quite often explicitly as well asindirectly (2Kgs 15ndash16 Isa 7 81ndash 10 23 109 171ndash3 Amos 62 1Chr 56 262Chr 2816ndash21) and this mirrors his profound influence on the history of theNorthern Kingdom These passages seemingly reflect the collective memoryand the developed tradition of this Assyrian ruler and his activities

Eg Albert Kirk Grayson ldquoAssyria Tiglath-pileser III to Sargon II (744ndash705 BC)rdquo in TheCambridge Ancient History Vol III2 second edition eds John Boardman I E S EdwardsE Sollberger and N G L Hammond (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1992) 71ndash 102 Rykle Borger and Hayim Tadmor ldquoZwei Beitraumlge zur alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft auf-grund der Inschriften Tiglathpilesers IIIrdquo ZAW 94 (1984) 244ndash51 Hayim Tadmor and ShigeoYamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (747ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V(726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) 106 17ndash19 132 10ndash 11


Very few royal inscriptions of Shalmaneser V the successor of Tiglath-piles-er III and especially no annals have survived The key information on his reign isknown from the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle and the Babylonian Chronicleswhich we will discuss below

Sargon II the successor of Shalmaneser V further expanded Assyriarsquos terri-tory by extensive military campaigning He states in his inscriptions that he con-quered Samaria and the Land of Humri as the Northern Kingdom of Israel isconventionally designated in the Assyrian royal inscriptions It seems that sever-al passages in the Hebrew Bible also refer to this Assyrian king (2Kgs 171ndash24181ndash 12 Isa 1027ndash32 144bndash21 201)

Considering the contemporariness of their composition to the events descri-bed the information found in the Assyrian royal inscriptions and especially theirchronological sequence is usually deemed reliable But the available inscriptionsrefer to the Northern Kingdom of Israel only in passing and thus do not provideadequate information for reconstructing this specific sequence of events In ad-dition the accounts are in no way unbiased as the royal inscriptions were pri-marily designed to convey Assyrian royal ideologysup3

212 The Assyrian Eponym Chronicle

The elaborate version of the Assyrian Eponym List dubbed the Assyrian EponymChronicle is another important historical source⁴ Since the late second millen-nium BCE limmu (or līmu) is the Assyrian designation for an official one-yearposition whose holder lends his name to the year in which he holds this officeWe therefore translate the term as ldquoeponymrdquo The Eponym List enumerates theholders of the limmu office in chronological order and the Eponym Chroniclesupplements this with information about key events affecting all of Assyria usu-ally just one per year Although the source is less biased than the inscriptions itoffers only limited information pertaining to the Northern Kingdom of Israel

Cf Shuichi Hasegawa ldquoAdad-nērārī IIIrsquos Fifth Year in the Sabarsquoa Stela HistoriographicalBackgroundrdquo RA 102 (2008) 89ndash98 id ldquoHistorical and Historiographical Notes on the Pazar-cık Stelardquo Akkadica 131 (2010) 1ndash9 Alan R Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-AssyrianText Corpus Project 1994)

4 Shuichi Hasegawa

213 The Babylonian Chronicles

The Babylonian Chronicles laconically record the key events in the history ofBabylon As several Assyrian kings including Tiglath-pileser III ShalmaneserV and intermittently Sargon II held the crown of Babylon the Chronicles some-times incorporate events pertaining to the Assyrian Empire including the men-tion of the conquest of Samaria under Shalmaneser V⁵

214 Assyrian Archival Texts

Samaria and its population are occasionally mentioned in Assyrian archivaltexts such as letters from the state correspondence administrative texts or pri-vate legal documents These sources usually date to the period after the conquestof the Northern Kingdom

22 Biblical Sources

Relevant source materials are included in (1) the Book of Kings and (2) the Booksof the Prophets

221 The Book of Kings 2Kgs 15ndash 18

The most detailed information on the final years of the Northern Kingdom de-rives from 2Kgs 15ndash 18 in the Hebrew Bible This source provides details suchas the names of the kings the year of their enthronement and the length oftheir reign major events circumstances of coups drsquoeacutetat and this is useful in cre-ating a basic chronological framework to reconstruct the history of the kingdomYet there are some problems in the biblical chronology that remain unsolvedPart V of this volume addresses the chronological framework of the Book ofKings

The text is mostly formulaic in style describing in brief the reigns of thekings of the Northern Kingdom It is generally assumed that parts of the accounts

Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (New York J J Augustin 1975)69ndash87 Jean-Jacques Glassner Chroniques meacutesopotamiennes (Paris Les belles lettres 1993)179ndash87


of a given kingrsquos reign go back to original archival records On the other handlater redactors are assumed to have added to this material and the resultanttext cannot be regarded as historically accurate To understand the nature ofthe text literary analysis is therefore indispensable The narrative art of theBook of Kings is investigated in Part VI of this volume

Most previous studies are based mainly on the Masoretic Text of the Book ofKings and failed to scrutinize the textual history of the Book of Kings But recentstudies demonstrate that the ancient Greek translations of the old Hebrew text ofthe Book of Kings such as the Antiochian text widely known as the Lucianic re-cension of the Septuagint sometimes preserve older readings⁶

The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible whose origins maygo back to the third century BCE The Antiochian text a revised version of an OldGreek translation of the Hebrew Bible survives in the form of manuscripts fromthe fourth century CE Yet the revision was unequivocally based on a text olderthan the oldest extant manuscripts of the Septuagint Thus the Antiochian textshould play an important role in reconstructing an older text of the Book ofKings Moreover it has recently been argued that the text of the Book of Kingsas preserved in the Vetus Latina a Latin translation of the Old Greek text ofthe Hebrew Bible is highly important as well although the extant manuscripttradition only partially provides the text of the Book of Kings⁷

The older text does not always corroborate the historical authenticity of theinformation that it contains If the text itself is a fiction regardless of its age his-torically accurate information cannot be expected in it On the other hand eventhough the text depends on an older source information included in the textcould have been altered by later editing For this reason it is imperative to recon-struct as old a text of the Book of Kings as possible before using it as historicalsource for reconstructing the last days of the Northern Kingdom Part IV of thisvolume concentrates on the various textual witnesses of the Book of Kings andthe reliability of the information they provide

For example see Shuichi Hasegawa ldquoThe Conquests of Hazael in 2 Kgs 1322 in the Antio-chian Textrdquo JBL 133 (2014) 61ndash76 Natalio Fernaacutendez Marcos ldquoDer antiochenische Text der griechischen Bibel in den Samuel-und Koumlnigsbuumlchern (1ndash4 Koumln LXX)rdquo in Im Brennpunkt Die Septuaginta Studien zur Entstehungund Bedeutung der Griechischen Bibel Band 2 ed Siegfried Kreuzer and Juumlrgen Peter Lesch(Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2004) 177ndash213 Alexander Fischer Der Text des Alten Testaments Neu-bearbeitung der Einfuumlhrung in die Biblia Hebraica von Ernst Wuumlrthwein (Tuumlbingen Deutsche Bi-belgesellschaft 2009) 138ndash42 Emmanuel Tov Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible Third Ed-ition Revised and Expanded (Minneapolis MN Fortress Press 2012) 146ndash47

6 Shuichi Hasegawa

222 The Books of the Prophets

There are other books in the Hebrew Bible that may contain important informa-tion on the last days of the Northern Kingdom Isa 7ndash8 refers to the Syro-Ephrai-mite War a conflict between the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the anti-Ju-daean league of the Northern Kingdom and Aram-Damascus which is alsorecorded in 2Kgs 16 In addition part of the Book of Hosea is sometimes assumedto allude to the situation on the eve of the fall of the Northern Kingdom

It is generally assumed that collections of the prophetsrsquo words or oral tradi-tions concerning their activities lie at the core of the books of the Prophets suchas Isaiah and Hosea Therefore in order to extract historical information fromthese books an approach is required that is different from that employed forthe analysis of the Book of Kings part of which is assumed to be derived fromarchival sources

Recently the difficulty in locating the original words of the prophets whichhad been assumed to be the nuclei in the prophetical books has been recog-nized since the prophetical books too have been subject to extensive editingAs a result the prophetical books are used less when discussing the propheticfigures in the time of the kingdoms and also as a historical source for recon-structing the history of the kingdoms⁸

On the other hand some scholars recently argued that with adequate cau-tion one can still extract historical information on the last days of the NorthernKingdom from the early prophecies in the Book of Hosea⁹ Regardless of the val-idity of this argument it reflects the view that the state of affairs as described inthe Book of Hosea corresponds to the historical situation ldquoat that timerdquo If soone must first aim to reconstruct the historical situation ldquoat that timerdquo on thebasis of other historical sources before judging the value of the Book of Hoseaas a historical source For this purpose one must build a rough historical frame-work based on these other sources and then examine whether or not the descrip-tion in the Book of Hosea fits in there

At any rate because of the process required to examine their historical reli-ability and due to the fact that they do not derive from archival sources the pro-phetical books can serve only as subsidiary sources for reconstructing the last

Ehud Ben-Zvi ldquoThe Concept of Prophetic Books and Its Historical Settingrdquo in The Productionof Prophecy Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud eds Diana V Edelman and Ehud BenZvi (London Routledge 2009) 73ndash95 Eg Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Source for the Last Days of the Kingdom ofIsraelrdquo BZ 59 (2015) 232ndash56


days of the Northern Kingdom of Israel The prophetical books and their histor-ical value for our topic are discussed in Part VIII of this volume

23 Archaeological Data

Excavations in the Southern Levant have been under way for more than150 years Recently archaeological information has been increasingly consultedfor reconstructing the history of ancient Israelsup1⁰ At many of the ruins of the citiesin the Northern Kingdom large-scale destruction layers have been detected thatallegedly date to the period of its conquest as they have been conventionally un-derstood as the results of Tiglath-pileser IIIrsquos military campaigns

Samaria the last capital of the Northern Kingdom was excavated twice firstin the beginning and then in the middle of the twentieth centurysup1sup1 In the 1990sthe results of the excavations were re-evaluated by Ron Tappy through extensiveanalysis of the original field notes and by adopting an updated methodologywhich offered a new archaeological basis for considering the conquest of Sama-riasup1sup2

Recent excavations for example those at Megiddo and Jezreel have alsoshed new light on the Assyrian administrative and economic strategy afterthese sites had been incorporated into the Empire Archaeological issues con-cerning the last days of the Northern Kingdom of Israel are discussed in PartIII of this volume

This problem is recently discussed in detail in Shuichi Hasegawa ldquoDavid and Goliath To-wards a Dialogue between Archaeology and Biblical Studiesrdquo in ldquoNow It Happened in ThoseDaysrdquo Studies in Biblical Assyrian and Other Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presentedto Mordechai Cogan on His 75th Birthday eds Shmuel Aḥituv Amitai Baruch-Unna IsraelEphʿal Tova Forti and Jeffrey H Tiggay (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2017) 607ndash22 George Andrew Reisner Clarence Stanley Fisher and D G Lyon Harvard Excavations at Sa-maria 1908ndash 1910 2 vols (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1924) John Winter Crowfootand Grace M Crowfoot Samaria-Sebaste 2 Early Ivories from Samaria (London Palestine Explo-ration Fund 1938) John Winter Crowfoot Kathleen Mary Kenyon and Eleazar Lipa Sukenik TheBuildings at Samaria (London Palestine Exploration Fund 1942) John Winter Crowfoot GraceM Crowfoot and Kathleen Mary Kenyon Samaria-Sebaste III The Objects (London Palestine Ex-ploration Fund 1957) Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria Volume I Early Iron Age through the NinthCentury BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 1992) id The Archaeology of Israelite SamariaVolume II The Eighth Century BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2001)

8 Shuichi Hasegawa

3 A Brief Synopsis of Previous Research

Although many books are devoted to the history of ancient Israel no single vol-ume comprehensively deals with the final years of the Northern Kingdom In thisshort overview of the history of research we shall concentrate on the two topicsthat have been the main focus of historical research on this period one is theSyro-Ephraimite War the other the exact date of the conquest of Samaria

Regarding the Syro-Ephraimite War Stuart A Irvine discussed the historicalsituation of the Southern Kingdom of Judah during this conflict in its interna-tional setting in a 1990 monograph based on the analysis of the Hebrew Bibleand the Assyrian royal inscriptionssup1sup3 According to Irvine Ahazrsquos request forhelp from Assyria as described in 2Kgs 16 is a dramatization by the Deuterono-mist and therefore cannot be regarded as historically factual Whether one ac-cepts Irvinersquos view or not his observation that the description in the Book ofKings does not reflect the historical event is reasonable

Irvinersquos primary interest lies in the historical circumstances of the prophe-cies in Isa 6ndash9 and how a prophet in the Hebrew Bible can be understood inrelation to kingship Hence although Irvine paid attention also to the NorthernKingdom his main focus rests on the situation in the Southern Kingdom The tra-ditional view of historical biblical scholarship that uncritically relies on the textin Isa 7 is to assume an anti-Assyrian alliance between Aram-Damascus and theNorthern Kingdom of Israelsup1⁴ According to this line of research the NorthernKingdom and Aram-Damascus allied in order to attack the Southern Kingdomof Judah which had refused to join the anti-Assyrian alliance with a view to re-place the Judahite king with a puppet ruler of their choosing who would join thealliance However no source other than Isa 7 attests to that purpose of the anti-

Stuart A Irvine Isaiah Ahaz and the Syro-Ephraimitic Crisis (Atlanta GA Scholars Press1990) Joachim Begrich ldquoDer syrisch-ephraimitische Krieg und seine weltpolitischen Zusam-menhaumlngerdquo ZDMG 83 (1929) 213ndash37 Bustenay Oded ldquoThe Historical Background of theSyro-Ephraimite War Re-Consideredrdquo CBQ 34 (1972) 153ndash65 Herbert Donner Geschichte desVolkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzuumlgen Teil 2 Von der Koumlnigszeit bis zu Alexanderdem Groβen mit einem Ausblick auf die Geschichte des Judentums bis Kochba 4th edition (Goumlttin-gen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1986) 337 Martin Noth Geschichte Israels 10th edition (Goumlttin-gen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1986) 235 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoForced Participation in Alliances inthe Course of the Assyrian Campaigns to the Westrdquo in Ah Assyriahellip Studies in Assyrian Historyand Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor ed Mordechai Cogan andIsrael Ephlsquoal (Jerusalem Magnes 1991) 80ndash98 esp 91ndash94 Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels(Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2016) 240


Assyrian alliance It is therefore requisite to examine once again the actions ofother kingdoms in the region as mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions inorder to gauge just how likely this hypothesis is

Turning to the conquest of Samaria Bob Becking has published a mono-graph on this topic in 1992sup1⁵ Using three sources namely 2Kgs the Assyrianroyal inscriptions and the Babylonian Chronicles Becking supported HugoWincklerrsquos and Hayim Tadmorrsquos view that Samaria was conquered twicesup1⁶ Hedated the first conquest to 723 BCE (Tadmor 722 BCE) and the second to720 BCE Becking also elucidated the deportation of people to the territorythat previously belonged to the Northern Kingdom as well as the deportationof the Israelites to other regions by using various Assyrian and Babylonian sour-ces His most recent views on the subject are presented in Part I of this volume

No single available source relates two consecutive conquests of Samaria Thetwo-conquest hypothesis was forwarded in order to explain the inconsistencyseen in the description of the conqueror of Samaria between 2Kgs 173ndash6189ndash 10 and the Babylonian Chronicles on the one hand and the Assyrianroyal inscriptions on the other hand The first two identify the conqueror as Shal-maneser V (727ndash722 BCE) whereas the inscriptions of Sargon II (722ndash705 BCE)describe the conquest of Samaria as a major achievement of this rulerrsquos earlyyears It seems significant that the Book of Kings and the Babylonian Chroniclesalthough different in viewpoint and language agree on the identity of the con-queror of Samaria and this has led to the formulation of the two-conquests hy-pothesis

On the other hand there are scholars who suggest that only one conquest ofSamaria took place Nadav Narsquoaman suggested that Samaria even if it was be-sieged by Shalmaneser V was conquered only once by Sargon II in 720 BCEsup1⁷S J Park tried to solve the above-mentioned problem by explaining that Sargon IIconquered Samaria under Shalmaneser V before his enthronement (722 BCE)sup1⁸

Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill1992) Hugo Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidung der Koumlnigsbuumlcherrdquo in id AlttestamentlicheUntersuchungen (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1892) 1ndash54 esp 15ndash20 Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns ofSargon II of Assur A Chronological-Historical Studyrdquo JCS 12 (1958) 33ndash40 Kyle Lawson Young-er Jr ldquoThe Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samariardquo Bib 71 (1990)206ndash25 Julian E Reade ldquoSargonrsquos Campaigns of 720 716 and 715 BC Evidence from theSculpturesrdquo JNES 35 (1076) 100ndash 101 M Christine Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Rea-son for Rejecting the Hypothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ 64 (2002) 59ndash77 Sung Jin Park ldquoA New Historical Reconstruction of the Fall of Samariardquo Bib 93 (2012)98ndash 106

10 Shuichi Hasegawa

Overall there is no scholarly consensus as to the date of the conquest and theconqueror of Samariasup1⁹

4 The Contributions Offered in the PresentVolume

Leading scholars from several disciplines contribute to the debate by presentingthe results of their research in this volume

With methodological reflections on his previous work Bob Becking attemptsto reconsider the fall of Samaria in a way that deliberately gives less priority tohighly biased textual sources such as the Hebrew Bible and the Assyrian royalinscriptions Based primarily on archaeological data Becking points out thatthe Assyrian Empirersquos interest in the conquest of the Southern Levant in the sec-ond half of the eighth century BCE was economically oriented rather than polit-ical

Based on the extant Assyrian royal inscriptions Jamie Novotny suggests thatmore information on the last days of the Northern Kingdom may once have beengiven in the ldquonow-lost sourcesrdquo of the three Assyrian monarchs Tiglath-pileserIII Shalmaneser V and Sargon II He concludes that especially inscriptions ofthe first two kings may well have contained more detailed information on thesubject of Samaria

Eckart Frahm presents new editions of eighteen passages from inscriptionsof Sargon II of Assyria that deal with the fall of Samaria He demonstrateshow misleading the information from Assyrian royal inscriptions can be attimes and highlights the resultant difficulty in reconstructing the history of thelast days of the Northern Kingdom Taking into account all the available dataFrahm reaches the provisional conclusion that Shalmaneser V was the Assyrianking who was solely responsible for the conquest of Samaria while the deporta-tion of its inhabitants took place under Sargon IIrsquos command

F Mario Fales while following Nadav Narsquoamanrsquos hypothesis of a single con-quest of Samaria explains the possible economic motivation (ldquogrand strategyrdquo)behind Assyriarsquos thrust into the Northern Kingdom such as better access to oliveoil and wine to the maritime trade of the Phoenicians to army horses and spe-

Cf John H Hayes and Jeffrey K Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samaria (730ndash720 BC)rdquo Bib 72(1991) 153ndash81 Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of SamariardquoCBQ 57 (1995) 52ndash64


cialized military professionals Fales regards the supposed three-year-siege of Sa-maria as non-real event

Karen Radner deals with the fate of its people after the fall of Samaria withinthe framework of the well-organized management of the populations of the vastlands under Assyrian rule A variety of contemporary Assyrian sources show thatSamarians with specific and specialized skill sets seemingly enjoyed compara-tively high status once resettled

Robert G Morkot summarizes the ongoing debates over the complicatedEgyptian chronology in the period of the last days of the Northern Kingdom Mor-kot suggests that the Northern Kingdom most probably had commercial and pos-sibly also close political relations with the Libyan rulers in the Delta rather thanwith the Kushite power in the south

Exploring the language of conquest in Sargon IIrsquos annals and the archaeo-logical record of the old excavations of Samaria Ron E Tappy points out theproblems in the excavatorsrsquo dating of Samariarsquos stratigraphical sequence Heconcludes that Samaria escaped wholesale destruction at the hands of the Assyr-ian forces

Based on updated archaeological information Norma Franklin reassessesthe function of Megiddo and Jezreel before and after the campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria to the region Well integrated into the Assyrian provincialsystem both continued to function as key military and administrative sites inthe region

Timo Tekoniemirsquos critical analysis of 2Kgs 17 demonstrates the significanceof text-critical study of the biblical text before using it as a historical sourceThere are a few instances in which the Old Greek text and the Masoretic textof the chapter do not agree and although most commentators have uncriticallygiven priority to the Masoretic text Tekoniemi argues that there are good reasonsto take the Old Greek Text more seriously into account

A close literary analysis of 2Kgs 173ndash6 and 189ndash 11 leads Danrsquoel Kahn topropose that the former is topically organized derived from an official Israelitesource while the latter is a late redactional insertion lacking any historically re-liable information

Christoph Levin likewise regards 2Kgs 189ndash11 as secondary but he findssecondary elements also in 2Kgs 173ndash4 which largely comprises later theologicalcomments Levin reconstructs the original record using 2Kgs 175ndash6 and 189ndash 11as a succinct account of Shalmaneser Vrsquos conquest of Samaria and his deporta-tion of its inhabitants to various places in the Assyrian Empire

Kristin Weingart challenges an old conundrum of biblical chronology in2Kgs 15ndash 18 Assuming the change of the New Year in the Northern Kingdomunder Assyrian influence during Menahemrsquos reign and identifying Jotham and

12 Shuichi Hasegawa

Ahaz as one and the same person Weingart provides an ingenious solution forthe difficulties encountered in the text

Steven L McKenzie discusses the same chronological issue Reconsideringthe merits and problems of previous scholarly suggestions McKenzie cannotfind an ultimate solution and regards the chronological data in 2Kgs 15 as ldquoun-usable for historical reconstructionrdquo

Analyzing the description of the kings of the Northern Kingdom in 2Kgs 15Christian Frevel draws attention to their negative portrayal which he sees as adeliberate strategy by the author Frevel warns against using the informationin the chapter for historical reconstructions

Basing his view on the analysis of the literary structure and the narrativepragmatic of 2Kgs 17 Michael Pietsch regards the text as a unit while he rejectsthe idea that the information given would have originated at the Northern courtFor him the complexity of the source allows us neither to reconstruct the courseof events nor to identify the Assyrian conqueror of Samaria

Georg Hentschel attempts to perceive in the descriptions in 2Kgs 15 and 17the change of foreign policy toward the Assyrian Empire during the last yearsof the Northern Kingdom and highlights how Assyriarsquos presence in the regionmight have exerted influence upon the chain of events that finally led the North-ern Kingdom to its fall

With a focus on methodological considerations Martti Nissinen discussesthe difficulty in gleaning historically reliable information from the Book ofHosea because of its later editing despite the fact that parts of the Book dateto the last days of the Northern Kingdom

Hugh G MWilliamson sifts through the Book of Isaiah to identify passagesthat possibly go back to the prophet who employs the terms ldquoEphraimrdquo ldquoSama-riardquo and once ldquoJacobrdquo for designating the Northern Kingdom Williamson de-fends the view that the concept of ldquoIsraelrdquo for the two nations must have existedeven before the Fall of Samaria as reflected in Isaiahrsquos usage of the term

With these papers our volume brings together leading scholars from differ-ent fields of research and for the first time all available data in order to discussthe problems concerning the last days of the Northern Kingdom from variousperspectives This will help I would hope to reach a better and deeper under-standing of this crucial period of Levantine history It is possible to argue thatit was these events that triggered the birth of a ldquoNew Israelrdquo in the SouthernKingdom of Judah in the following decades and that eventually led to the forma-tion of the Hebrew Bible and its underlying theology

Reader of this volume should keep in mind that although its contributorshave tackled the historical issues from different perspectives many are still in-conclusive and thus open for further discussion At times the conclusions of in-


dividual contributors are at odds with those reached by others As ever we canyearn for the discovery of additional sources that might resolve difficulties andachieve consensus But in the meantime I sincerely hope that the present vol-ume with its interdisciplinary approach will provide rich material for future re-search on the Northern Kingdom of Israel

Abbreviations in this volume follow The SBL Handbook of Style 2nd ed (At-lanta GA SBL Press 2014)

14 Shuichi Hasegawa


Bob Becking

How to Encounter an Historical Problem

ldquo722ndash720 BCErdquo as a Case Study

1 De ondergang van Samaria (1985)

In November 1985 I defended my doctoral thesis at Utrecht University I wrote mydissertation on the Assyrian conquest of the capital city of the Northern Kingdomof Israel from an historical as well as from an exegetical point of viewsup1 AlthoughI tried to escape the traditional way of history-writing as a narrative about kingsand battles I now see that I was too event-oriented and influenced by writtensources In other words I took texts especially the Hebrew Bible as a startingpoint for my investigation then looked for support in other pieces of evidenceAdditionally I was too focused on verifying isolated events Rethinking my ap-proach leads me to three questionsa What is a textb How does one properly encounter the pastc What about the histoire conjoncturelle

2 What is a Text

What is a text Or more specifically how does a text relate to an event The He-brew Bible is a text or better a collection of texts partly of a literary characterThis observation opens a whole line of questions There seems to be a dichotomyin the basic interpretation of texts Novels for instance are generally understoodto be fictional When Biblical texts are labelled as literary texts are they by im-

I would like to thank Shuichi Hasegawa for inviting me to the stimulating meeting in MunichI have learned much from all the other papers and from the fine and open discussion StevenMcKenzie and Ronald Tappy kindly provided some suggestions to improve my English while De-nise Bolton (Munich) language-edited the complete manuscript All remaining errors are ofcourse mine

Bob Becking De ondergang van Samaria Historische exegetische en theologische opmerkingenbij II Koningen 17 (Diss Utrecht Meppel Krips Repro 1985) the historical introduction was re-worked into English Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study(Leiden Brill 1992)

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-002

plication fictional And the other way around are non-fiction texts by implica-tion not literary I will try to elucidate this point with an example Many goodbooks on history are praised for their literary quality A good style and masteryof the language often leads to books that are both informative and a pleasure toread The question is how do such books relate to reality They certainly refer toevents that happened in real-time They are however not equal to the event(s)Such texts do relate to reality since they are descriptions of the events

In a comparable way Biblical texts ndash of whatever literary quality ndash should beconstrued as descriptions of (parts of) reality In fact they are to be understoodas interpretations of what might have happened Even when a Biblical text refersto an event that with great certainty can be classified in the category lsquodid reallyhappenrsquo the text does not equal the event It is ndash not unlike a restaurant bill ndash aselection of parts of the event presented from a specific point of view Texts in-form the reader about the view of the author on the pastsup2

As for the period of the last days of the Kingdom of Israel it should be keptin mind that neither the Biblical accountssup3 nor the Assyrian inscriptions⁴ equalthe event Both sets inform the reader about the view of their authors on the as-sumed events and give hints about those events

3 The Source as a Container of Evidence

This brings me to the following remark Texts are historical sources in the sameway that artefacts are There is however a problem This problem is connected tothe fact that texts are complex by nature They are built up in a way comparableto atoms In a text we can find particles and forces ie fermions and gluons⁵ Inthis metaphor the particles are the singular statements about the past ndash such asldquoSargon II conquered the city of Samariardquo The gluons in a text are the ideologyand the narrative structure that hold these particles together In other words a

See Chris Lorenz Konstruktion der Vergangenheit eine Einfuumlhrung in die Geschichtstheorie(WienKoumllnWeimar Boumlhlau 1997) 2Kgs 171ndash6 189ndash11 Cf the essays by Eckart Frahm and Jamie Novotny in this volume The material is presentedand discussed in eg Becking The Fall of Samaria 21ndash45 and Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoTheFall of Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 is incomplete due to pub-lication of new Assyrian texts See on these particles Toshiyuki Morii Chong-Sa Lim and Soumyendra N Mukherjee ThePhysics of the Standard Model and Beyond (Singapore World Scientific Publishing Company2004)

18 Bob Becking

distinction should be made between individual clauses ndash and their historical(im)possibility ndash and the narrative as a whole The narrative structure as awhole is the matrix that is created by the narrator or historian to convincethe reader of the truth of his or her view on the events It is for this reasonthat a historian has to deconstruct a given source in search of trustworthy par-ticles Only then can the Hebrew Bible be seen as a ldquosource of informationrdquo atthe level of its various particles but not at the level of the text as a whole

A warning should be taken from the philosophy of history of Robin G Col-lingwood⁶ Collingwood was looking for a way out of the dilemma between ldquore-alismrdquo and ldquoscepticismrdquo Realism is the position that the sources inform us in arealistic way about the past A sceptic is of the opinion that the past is inacces-sible By implication we do not have any real knowledge of the past Colling-wood tried to overcome this dilemma by elaborating a view on the characterof so-called historical sources These traces of the past are available and know-able in the present All the historian has in hand are the particles of evidencemirroring the past The evidence makes it possible to know the past but onlyin a restricted way The task of the historian is to collect as much evidence aspossible and then construct a personal image of the past In this re-enactmentmodels and imagination play a role The historian cannot do without metaphor-ical language to describe in an approximate and incomplete way the events mir-rored in the sources

In combining both these approaches to the character of written evidence Ihave come to the position that the Old Testament text should be treated primarilyas a collection of trace evidence The Old Testament supplies its readers with di-verse vestiges of the past that one way or another mirror the past These tracescan be (and have been) treated differently This difference is partly related to theideology of the historian ndash be it minimalistic or maximalistic or something inbetween Of greater importance however is the awareness of other traces of evi-dence and the matrix in which the historian ldquoreadsrdquo this variety of evidence⁷

Robin G Collingwood The Idea of History Revised Edition with Lectures 1926ndash 1928 (OxfordClarendon Press 1994) On Collingwoodrsquos historiography see now Dale Jacquette ldquoCollingwoodon Historical Authority and Historical Imaginationrdquo Journal of the Philosophy of History 3(2009) 55ndash78 and Jan van der Dussen History as a Science The Philosophy of R G Colling-wood (Dordrecht Springer 2012) Interesting remarks on this can be found in David Henige Historical Evidence and Argument(Madison WI University of Wisconsin Press 2005) Kimberly Anderson ldquoThe Footprint and theStepping Foot Archival Records Evidence and Timerdquo Archival Science 12 (2012) 1ndash23 and TimKenyon ldquoOral History and the Epistemology of Testimonyrdquo Social Epistemology 30 (2016)45ndash66


I will come back to this below In other words texts ndash as I see it now ndash are minorpieces of evidence disconnected footprints in the disturbed snow of the pastThey also contain ldquocluesrdquo references to the past that go beyond the direct con-text of the given piece of evidence and which inform in an indirect way about thepast⁸ These traces and clues however are wrapped in an often biased narrative

4 The Point of View as a Power Position

Texts are not neutral containers The focalization-theory of Geacuterard Genette ar-gues that the information in a text is always steered by the narrator⁹ The narra-tor makes the selection out of the available material and connects this selectioninto the order of the given text The reader is thus forced to look at the fable ndasha term for the basic narration that became text in a narrativesup1⁰ ndash the way the nar-rator wants the reader to look at it The narrator is like the hole in a shoeboxthrough which a diorama can be seen Hence the narrator of a text is in apower position and the reader is dependent on this sluice It is the narratorwho forces one to look at the ensemble of the narrative from his or her pointof view With regard to the Hebrew Bible this implies that historians should atleast be aware of the fact that information about the past is sluiced through aspecific point of view It is not neutral reports that are presented

In view of the written evidence concerning the Assyrian conquest of Sama-ria it should be noted that we are forced to look at the short narratives in theBook of Kings as well as the seemingly objective reports in the Assyrian royalinscriptions through a specific lens 2Kgs 171ndash6 and 189ndash 11 represent the

Carlo Ginzburg Clues Myths and the Historical Method (Baltimore MD Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press 1989 translated from the 1986 Italian publication) Geacuterard Genette ldquoDiscours du reacutecit essaie de meacutethoderdquo in id Figures III (Paris Eacutedition duSeuil 1972) id Nouveau discours du reacutecit (Paris Eacutedition du Seuil 1983) = id Narrative Dis-course Revisited (New York Cornell University Press 1989) see also Willem Bronzwaer ldquoIm-plied Author Extradiegetic Narrator and Public Reader Geacuterard Genettersquos NarratologicalModel and the Reading Version of Great Expectationsrdquo Neophilologus 621 (1978) 1ndash 18 MiekeBal ldquoThe Narrating and the Focalizing a Theory of the Agents in Narrativerdquo Style 17 (1983)234ndash69 Franccedilois Tolmie Narratology and Biblical Narratives a Practical Guide (Eugene ORWipf and Stock Publishers 1999) esp 29ndash38 Michael Hoey Textual Interaction an Introduc-tion to Written Discourse Analysis (LondonNew York Routledge 2001) This concept should not be confused with the fable as a form in folk literature such as thefables of Aesop or de la Fontaine

20 Bob Becking

view of the Deuteronomistic historian(s) on the pastsup1sup1 The pertinent inscriptionsof Sargon II reveal the view of the Assyrian court-writers and their royal ideolo-gysup1sup2 They are written to impress the populace especially those who visited theroyal palace as well as to account for the responsibilities of the Assyrian rulergiven to him by the Assyrian gods

Although deportations are referred to the effect that those events wouldhave had on the lives of ldquoordinary peoplerdquo is silenced both in the HebrewBible and the Assyrian inscriptions The reports on exile and deportation are nar-rated from the focus of temple and court

In sum it is possible to take written texts as the starting point for an histor-ical inquest In view of the remarks made it is better not to take these writtentexts as a starting point for finding the answer(s) of the historical problem(s)How then to proceed

5 A Five Dimensional Matrix

More than twenty years ago Manfred Weippert wrote a very interesting contribu-tion to ancient Israelite historiographysup1sup3 I agree with him that the historiographyof ancient Israel had arrived at a crossroads around 1990 and that it was impor-tant to take the right turnWeippert hinted at two methodological weaknesses inancient Israelite historiography

Firstly he argued that much of the traditional historiography is too ldquoevent-orientedrdquo Histories of ancient Israel focus on important events in the assumedhistory This implies that an important tendency in ldquogeneralrdquo historiography is

From the abundance of literature on the Deuteronomistic historian(s) I only refer to the syn-thesizing work by Thomas C Roumlmer The So-called Deuteronomistic History a Sociological His-torical and Literary Introduction (LondonNew York Continuum 2005) Much has been written on Mesopotamian royal ideology see recently Douglas J GreenldquoI Undertook Great Worksrdquo The Ideology of Domestic Achievements in West Semitic Royal Inscrip-tions (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2010) Linda T Darling A History of Social Justice and PoliticalPower in the Middle East The Circle of Justice from Mesopotamia to Globalization (LondonNewYork Routledge 2013) 15ndash31 Vladimir Sazonov ldquoSome Remarks Concerning the Developmentof the Theology of War in Ancient Mesopotamiardquo in The Religious Aspects of War in the AncientNear East Greece and Rome ed Krzysztof Ulanowski (Leiden Brill 2016) 23ndash50 David TRowlands ldquoImperial Ideology in the Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquo Teaching History 50 (2016) 4ndash7 Manfred Weippert ldquoGeschichte Israels am Scheidewegrdquo TRu 58 (1993) 71ndash 103 the article isin fact a lengthy review of Herbert Donner Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn inGrundzuumlgen (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1984) and its reprint in one volume in1987


passed by The French historiographical revolution known as the ldquoAnnalesSchoolrdquosup1⁴ is overlooked by almost all historians of ancient Israel This impliesthat there is seldom a window into daily lifeWeippert observed that the inclina-tion of historians of ancient Israel to focus on events often results in closing theways that would lead to an understanding of processes in ancient Israel at thelevel of longue dureacutee or even at the level of the histoire conjuncturellesup1⁵ Fortu-nately in the 20 years following this remarkable contribution we have seensome shifts in the fieldsup1⁶

SecondlyWeippert argues that scholars ndash especially biblical scholars ndash writ-ing a ldquoHistory of Israelrdquo too easily take the biblical narrative at face value anduse it as the backbone of their (re)construction

In order to overcome these weaknessesWeippert proposes approaching thepast through a set of five windows In his opinion the following five dimensionsneed to be explored (1) landscape (2) climate (3) archaeology (4) epigraphyand (5) biblical texts The past needs to be looked at through these five windowsand in the order givensup1⁷ On the basis of the evidence found a histoire conjunc-turellesup1⁸ can be designed In the next sections I will apply this approach in con-nection with the ldquoThe Last Days of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo

51 Landscape

A look at the landscape of ancient IsraelPalestine makes clear that this was ahilly area that contained various and differing zones The mountainous core ofJudah and Samaria was blessed with fertile soil However this core area as

A good introduction is to be found in Peter Burke The French Historical Revolution the An-nales School 1929ndash89 (Stanford CA Stanford University Press 1990) On this concept see Fernand Braudel ldquoHistoire et sciences sociales La longue dureacuteerdquo An-nales Histoire Sciences Sociales 13 (1958) 725ndash53 Important voices being Hans M Barstad History and the Hebrew Bible Studies in AncientIsraelite and Ancient near Eastern Historiography (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2008) Kurt LNoll Canaan and Israel in Antiquity a Textbook on History and Religion Second Edition (Lon-donNew York Bloomington 2013) 23ndash65 Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart Kohl-hammer 2015) 17ndash41 Lester L Grabbe Ancient Israel What Do We Know and How Do We Knowit (LondonNew York Bloomington 2017 rev ed) 3ndash38 This matrix is more fruitful than that proposed by Heather Gerow ldquoMethodology in AncientHistory Reconstructing the Fall of Samariardquo Constellations 2 (2010) no 1who operates with themodel to start by the Hebrew Bible and look for corroborations in other sources and findings On this concept see Braudel ldquoHistoire et Sciencesrsquo with critical remarks by Gerrit van RoonldquoHistorians and long wavesrdquo Futures 13 (1981) 383ndash88

22 Bob Becking

well as the surrounding semi-arid zones constantly required rainwater and atechnology to prevent run-off In other words the area had great agricultural po-tential but needed an intelligent cultivator The territory of the Northern Kingdomwas divided into various zones The presence of hills and mountains created apatchwork of semi-independent agricultural entities This element certainlyslowed the pace of nation-building after the collapse of the Bronze Age cultureThe Hebrew Bible describes the Northern Kingdom as a complex of ten differenttribes I will not argue for the historicity of this tradition but only note that thelandscape was ripe for regionalization These tribal areas might eventually haveunifiedsup1⁹ However the different identities might have survived for considerabletime Pride in onersquos tribal identity in addition or opposition to the overarchingnational identity probably endured until the Babylonian Exile The presence ofvarious tribal factions ndash and their different ambitions ndash might have negativelyaffected the alertness of the central organs of power an issue that could havecontributed to the internal weakness of the Northern Kingdom at the eve of de-structionsup2⁰

52 Climate

Having a semi-arid climate the territory of the Kingdom of Israel was stronglydependent on rainfall for its agriculture The way in which the populationcoped with this problem will be discussed in the next section The Iron Age Indash IIperiod coincided with a period of global cooling Climate in the Iron Age IIndash IIIperiod remained stable in ancient Israelsup2sup1 We can therefore assume that no spe-cific impulses from a (sudden) change in climate would have influenced thecourse of events leading to the end of the kingdom

On this process see Alexander H Joffe ldquoThe Rise of Secondary States in the Iron Age Le-vantrdquo JESHO 45 (2002) 425ndash67 This view for instance in an antagonism between lsquoGileaditesrsquo and lsquoManassitesrsquo as argued forby John Gray I amp II Kings (London SCM Press 1977 third ed) or William H Shea ldquoThe Date andSignificance of the Samaria Ostracardquo IEJ 27 (1977) 16ndash27 is difficult to test See eg Arie S IssarWater Shall Flow from the Rock Hydrology and Climate in the Landsof the Bible (BerlinNew York Springer 1990) Lester L Grabbe ldquoThe Kingdom of Israel fromOmri to the Fall of Samaria If We Only Had the Bible helliprdquo in Ahab Agonistes The Rise andFall of the Omri Dynasty ed Lester L Grabbe (LondonNew Tork TampT Clark 2007) 54ndash99


53 Archaeology

In my monograph on the Assyrian conquest I briefly discussed the archaeolog-ical evidencesup2sup2 As I now see it I was then much too focused on the military andadministrative aspects of events I scrutinized the archaeological evidence fortraces of destruction at a variety of sites as well as for traces of the administra-tive take-over by the Assyrians by looking at the construction of buildings thatcould be interpreted as Assyrian bureaucratic centers I now have quite a differ-ent set of questions with which to ldquoreadrdquo the archaeological evidence Firstlydoes the evidence support or challenge the assumption that the change in polit-ical power had little influence on rural communities in the territorysup2sup3 Secondlywhat happened in Samaria And thirdly what do we know about the Assyrianmilitary presence in the area

I will start with a side remark As a matter of fact in my earlier thesis I drewthe correct conclusion that the archaeological evidence was insufficient to solvethe chronological riddlesup2⁴

Regarding the first question the archaeological data from areas outside Sa-maria provides no evidence for the complete destruction or disruption of the Is-raelite countrysidesup2⁵ The fact that the agricultural terraces remained intact canbe seen as a clue to the Assyrian interest in maintaining food production Duringthe Iron Age II period some technological improvements in the system of terraceagriculture took place This system is a typical element of the longue dureacutee In theLevant the construction of terraces on hill slopes has very ancient (even pre-his-toric) rootssup2⁶ During the Early Bronze Age I period this terrace technique was

Becking The Fall of Samaria 56ndash60 A good starting point for this exercise is to be found in Magen Broshi and Israel FinkelsteinldquoThe Population of Palestine in Iron Age IIrdquo BASOR 287 (1992) 47ndash60 Becking The Fall of Samaria 56ndash60 See also Frevel Geschichte Israels 242ndash43 From the Natufian site Nahal Oren four architectural terraces are known that supported asettlement of about 13 hut-dwellings see Moshe Stekelis and Tamar Yizraeli ldquoExcavations atNahal Oren A Preliminary Reportrdquo IEJ 13 (1963) 1ndash 12 see also Ian Kuijt and Nigel Goring-Mor-ris ldquoForaging Farming and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Le-vant A Review and Synthesisrdquo Journal of World Prehistory 16 (2002) 361ndash440 Guy Bar-OzTamar Dayan Daniel Kaufman and Mina Weinstein-Evron ldquoThe Natufian Economy at el-WadTerrace with Special Reference to Gazelle Exploitation Patternsrdquo Journal of Archaeological Sci-ence 31 (2004) 217ndash31

24 Bob Becking

implemented on a larger scalesup2⁷ This technology helped to arrest the run-offwater making it useful for agricultural purposes Additionally the terrace sys-tem meant that more horizontal surfaces for agricultural use came into exis-tence which made the work for the cultivator much easier A system of terracesis also very helpful in avoiding erosionsup2⁸ The presence of a developed system ofagricultural terraces contains an important clue The system hints at an ad-vanced level of agricultural development Combining the terrace system withthe deployment of the iron-tipped ploughsup2⁹ farmers were able to produce morethan their local need This surplus was important as a reserve in times of droughtor crop failure On the other hand the surplus was also needed to pay off localelites in exchange for their protectionsup3⁰ In the territory of the Northern Kingdomthe technology of food production on terraces continued after the Assyrians tookover the capital city of Samaria

Moving to the city of Samaria itself a few remarks must be made Crowfootand Kenyonrsquos excavations brought to light various indications of demolition anddestruction Kenyon classified these traces as silent witnesses to a massive As-syrian conquest of the city In her view the overwhelming power of the Assyrianarmy overpowered the Israelite defence-lines by destroying great parts of the cityand its buildingssup3sup1 Stig Forsberg challenged this interpretation suggesting it wasbiased towards biblical traditions In his opinion the traces do not refer to a sin-gle eighth century destruction of the city but are witnesses to a variety of attackson the city from tribal conflicts within the Kingdom of Israel as well as from with-out from the Assyrians via the Scythians up to Roman times In his viewKathleen Kenyon telescoped evidence from a long time period into the short

See Nelson Glueck ldquoFurther Explorations in Eastern Palestinerdquo BASOR 86 (1942) 14ndash24Issar Water Shall Flow from the Rock 123ndash40 Pierre de Miroscheddji ldquoTel Yarmut 1992rdquoIEJ 42 (1992) 265ndash72 See eg David C Hopkins The Highlands of Canaan Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age(Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press 1985) 173ndash86 Hendrik J Bruins M Evenari and U NesslerldquoRainwater-Harvesting for Food Production in Arid Zonesrdquo Applied Geography 6 (1986) 13ndash32Karl W Butzer ldquoEnvironmental History in the Mediterranean World Cross-Disciplinary Investi-gation of Cause-and-Effect for Degradation and Soil Erosionrdquo Journal of Archaeological Sci-ence 32 (2005) 1773ndash800 See Hopkins The Highlands of Canaan 217ndash23 On the development of agriculture see Patrick Nolan and Gerhard Lenski Human Societies(Boulder AZ Paradigm 2004) See eg John W Crowfoot Grace M Crowfoot and Kathleen M Kenyon The Objects fromSamaria (London Palestine Exploration Fund 1957) Kathleen M Kenyon Royal Cities of theOld Testament (New York Schocken 1971)


time slot of the last days of the Kingdom of Israelsup3sup2 Ron Tappy too referred tothe methodological weaknesses in Kenyonrsquos reconstruction According to himKenyonrsquos work suffers from the lack of a clear stratigraphy ndash an argument thatparallels Forsbergrsquos Kenyonrsquos documentation of the find spots of the evidenceis ndash in Tappyrsquos view ndash sloppy and loose If I understand him correctly someof the traces can be connected to the Assyrian assault The city however wasnot completely devastated The presence of Israelite-Assyrian pottery indicatesthat the tell remained occupiedsup3sup3

There are a few archaeological clues about the Assyrian military presence inthe area Fantalkin and Tal have re-examined the remains of a fortress at Tell Qu-dadi (Tell esh-Shuna) located on the northern bank of the mouth of the YarkonRiver Their analysis of the ceramic assemblage made clear that the site was onlyestablished in the second half of the eighth century BCE They argue that thisstronghold should not be interpreted as an Israelite defensive fortress but asan Assyrian establishment that secured Assyrian trade along the via marissup3⁴This would indicate that the Assyrian interest was more focused on tradealong the Mediterranean coast than it was on the agricultural potential of thehill country In addition Finkelstein convincingly argued that the tower excavat-ed by Albright and Lapp at Tell el-Fulsup3⁵ was first constructed in the Iron IIC pe-riod as an Assyrian watchtower commanding the northern approach to Jerusa-lemsup3⁶ This military structure needs to be construed as a defensive measure

Stig Forsberg Near Eastern Destruction Datings as Sources for Greek and Near Eastern IronAge Chronology Archaeological and Historical Studies The cases of Samaria (722 BC) and Tarsus(696 BC) (Uppsala Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 1995) esp 25ndash36 Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria Volume II The Eighth Century BCE (Wi-nona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2001) 351ndash441 id ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samaria Toward aDialogue between Texts and Archaeologyrdquo in Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeol-ogy and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie White Craw-ford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jerusalem W F Albright Institute of Archaeological ResearchIsraelExploration Society 2007) 258ndash79 Note that Israel Finkelstein The Forgotten Kingdom The Ar-chaeology and History of Northern Israel (Atlanta GA SBL Press 2013) does not refer to thisquestion or the work of Tappy Alexander Fantalkin and Oren Tal ldquoRe-Discovering the Iron Age Fortress at Tell Qudadi inthe Context of Neo-Assyrian Imperialistic Policiesrdquo PEQ 141 (2009) 188ndash206 see also YifatThareani ldquoThe Empire and the ldquoUpper Seardquo Assyrian Control Strategies along the Southern Le-vantine Coastrdquo BASOR 375 (2016) 77ndash 102 See Nancy L Lapp ldquoCasemate Walls in Palestine and the Late Iron II Casemate at Tell el-Ful(Gibeah)rdquo BASOR 223 (1976) 25ndash42 Israel Finkelstein ldquoTell el-Ful Revisited The Assyrian and Hellenistic Periods (With a NewIdentification)rdquo PEQ 143 (2011) 106ndash 18

26 Bob Becking

against a possible attack from Judah In a different way the Tell el-Ful towerserved the Assyrian interests in the area of the former Kingdom of Israel

An interesting remark has been made by a group of osteo-archaeologists Ac-cording to them human remains dating from the Iron Age IIB period Levant ndashwhen the Assyrian Empire was at its height ndash only rarely manifest trauma tothe skull left forearm vertebrae and ribs The few existing examples could beinterpreted as referring to war-time circumstances The great majority of intactskeletons hint that the Assyrians were not as cruel and unrelenting towardstheir enemies as is often supposed by traditionsup3⁷

In sum the Assyrian take-over was less brutal than often imagined The evi-dence hints that the Assyrians wanted to rule over the territory in order to safe-guard their economic interests such as the trade route along the coast and theremittance of the agricultural surplus

54 Epigraphy

There are no paleo-Hebrew inscriptions that can directly be connected to the As-syrian conquest of Samaria Unfortunately there is no counterpart to the Lachishostraca that describe the fear that arose in this Judaean stronghold during thecampaign of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem in the early sixth centuryBCEsup3⁸ Fortunately we have some material to work with The Samaria ostracadocument the delivery of wine and oil from various districts to the court in Sa-maria around the middle of the eighth century BCE sup3⁹ The absence of compara-

H Cohen V Slon A Barash H May B Medlej and I Hershkovitz ldquoAssyrian Attitude To-wards Captive Enemies a 2700-Year-Old Paleo-Forensic Studyrdquo International Journal of Osteoar-chaeology 23 (2013) 265ndash80 Susan G Sheridan ldquoBioarchaeology in the Ancient Near EastChallenges and Future Directions for the Southern Levantrdquo American Journal of Physical Anthro-pology 162 (2017) 110ndash52 Lak (6)11ndash21 editio princeps Harry Torczyner Lachish I The Lachish Letters (LondonNewYork Oxford University Press 1938) Sam (8)11ndash 102 see Shea ldquoThe Date and Significance of the Samaria Ostracardquo On the ad-ministration and the commodities see Baruch Rosen ldquoWine and Oil Allocations in the SamariaOstracardquo TA 1314 (1986ndash87) 39ndash45 Meindert Dijkstra ldquoChronological Problems of the EighthCentury BCE a New Proposal for Dating the Samaria Ostracardquo in Past Present Future The Deu-teronomistic History and the Prophets ed Johannes C de Moor and Harry F van Rooy (LeidenBrill 2000) 76ndash87 Avraham Faust ldquoHousehold Economies in the Kingdoms of Israel andJudahrdquo in Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond ed Assaf Yasur-Landau JennieR Ebeling and Laura B Mazow (Leiden Brill 2011) 255ndash74 Matthew J Suriano ldquoWine Ship-ments to Samaria from Royal Vineyardsrdquo Tel Aviv 43 (2016) 99ndash 110 on the archaeological con-


ble documents from the period after the Assyrian conquest of the capital citydoes not indicate a break in the production of oil and wine in the area Wecan only assume that the Assyrian administration found other ways of recordingthese deliveries

Epigraphic evidence indicates that the exiled Israelites were carried awayto till the fields in Assyria and that some of them were incorporated into the As-syrian army⁴⁰ According to the documents at least a part of these exiles lived inrestricted freedom Some were accepted as witnesses in various contracts Infor-mation about their religion is absent except for the fact that many of them hadnames with a Yahwistic-theophoric element⁴sup1 Neo-Assyrian inscriptions foundin the territory of the former Northern Kingdom ndash fragmentary and rare asthey are ndash indicate that the lsquonewcomersrsquo ie those exiled from Neo-Babylonianterritories who were conquered by the Assyrians had mingled with the localpopulation⁴sup2

Royal inscriptions reporting the Assyrian conquest of Samaria supply re-stricted and biased information on the past This does not imply that they areof no value for the historian They should however be taken for what theyare expressions of a royal discourse larded with some details that could be cor-rect⁴sup3

55 Hebrew Bible

I will not discuss or summarize the debate on the value of the Hebrew Bible forthe reconstruction of the past The interested reader is referred to the very infor-

text of the find of the ostraca see Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of the Ostraca House at IsraeliteSamaria Epigraphic Discoveries in Complicated Contexts (Boston MA American Schools of Ori-ental Research 2016) See Ran Zadok ldquoIsraelites and Judaeans in the Neo-Assyrian Documentation (732ndash602 BCE)An Overview of the Sources and a Socio-Historical Assessmentrdquo BASOR 374 (2015) 159ndash89 andRadnerrsquos chapter in this volume For a survey see Becking The Fall of Samaria 61ndash93 with Zadok ldquoIsraelites and Judaeansrdquoand Josette Elayi Sargon II King of Assyria (Atlanta GA SBL Press 2017) 50ndash51 See Becking The Fall of Samaria 94ndash118 see also Karel van der Toorn ldquoCuneiform Docu-ments from Syria-Palestine Texts Scribes and Schoolsrdquo ZDPV 116 (2000) 97ndash 113 Wayne Hor-owitz Takayoshi Oshima and Seth Sanders ldquoA Bibliographical List of Cuneiform Inscriptionsfrom Canaan PalestinePhilistia and the Land of Israelrdquo JAOS 122 (2002) 753ndash66 The inscriptions are discussed in Becking The Fall of Samaria 21ndash45 On Sargon II see nowalso Sarah C Melville The Campaigns of Sargon II King of Assyria 721ndash705 BC (Norman OKUniversity of Oklahoma Press 2016) 21ndash55 and Elayi Sargon II

28 Bob Becking

mative book by Brad Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore⁴⁴ As for the reports in theHebrew Bible on the last days of the Kingdom of Israel scholars hold differentpositions on the provenance of these textual units and their date of compositionI will not try to summarize that discussion or argue for a specific position⁴⁵These textual units can be read in two ways

Firstly reading the texts from a factual perspective it is clear that 2Kgs171ndash6 and 189ndash 11 offer a set of propositions about the event1 Hoshea the last king of the Northern Kingdom rebelled against his Assyrian

overlord2 Hoshea unavailingly looked for support in Egypt3 Shalmaneser (V) king of Assyria conquered the city of Samaria4 Inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom were carried away in exile to a set of

localities controlled by the Assyrian Empire

These propositions can be rephrased as hypotheses about the past It is howev-er impossible to verify their implied claims In case it turns out that they are allcorrect it should be noted that they can only be interpreted as supplying a skel-eton without flesh of the events They only supply surface information on thecourse of events The impact of the event on the life of (ordinary) people isnot narrated

Secondly the Book of Kings offers a view on the reasons for the Assyrianconquest from a perspective comparable to that of the longue dureacutee but quitedifferent from the Annales-perspective The religious ideology of authors presentsthe fall of Samaria as the result of divine wrath triggered by the illicit conduct ofthe kings and inhabitants of Israel⁴⁶ This explanation will not convince the mod-ern post-modern or post-post-modern historian It indicates however that theBiblical writers did look at the event from a broader perspective

Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E Kelle Biblical History and Israelrsquos Past The Changing Studyof the Bible and History (Grand Rapids MICambridge Eerdmans 2011) See Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 477ndash79 the various commentaries on the Book of Kingsand the chapters by Levin McKenzie and Tekoniemi in this volume See my analysis of 2Kgs 177ndash20 and 21ndash23 in Bob Becking From David to Gedaliah the Bookof Kings as Story and History (Fribourg Universitaumltsverlag amp Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck und Ru-precht 2007) 88ndash122


6 The Two-Conquests Theory

Previously I have defended the ldquotwo-conquests theoryrdquo⁴⁷ This idea was first for-mulated by Hugo Winckler⁴⁸ and later elaborated by Hayim Tadmor⁴⁹ This theo-ry reconciles the claims by two Assyrian kings to have conquered Samaria BothShalmaneser V and Sargon II are described as conqueror of the capital of theKingdom of Israel In the Babylonian Chronicle it is said that Shalmaneser ldquode-stroyed Samariardquo (urušaacute-ma-ra-rsquo-in iḫ-te-pi)⁵⁰ In the royal inscriptions narratingthe deeds of Sargon II this king is presented as the one who ldquobesieged and con-quered Samerinardquo (urusa-me-ri-na al-me ak-šud) over half a dozen times⁵sup1 In myopinion the chronological riddle can best be solved by assuming a twofold As-syrian take-over firstly by Shalmaneser V and after the premature death of thisking by his successor Sargon II⁵sup2

The re-reading of the archaeological evidence however prompts me to re-phrase the theory The relatively scarce evidence for demolition both in Samariaand in the countryside urges one to rethink the character of the language in theAssyrian inscriptions With Ron Tappy I am now convinced that the tough lan-guage in these inscriptions is primarily hyperbolic⁵sup3 The martial expression ofconquest and demolition functioned to impress the audience at home in Assyria

Becking Fall of Samaria 21ndash45 Hugo Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1892) 15ndash20 Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur a Chronological-Historical StudyrdquoJCS 12 (1958) 22ndash40 77ndash100 Tadmor does not refer to Winckler however Babylonian Chronicle I i 28 see A Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (LocustValley NY Augustin 1975) 69ndash87 Tadmor ldquoCampaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 39 Becking Fall of Sama-ria 22ndash25 Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 464ndash8 Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoDid Shalmaneser V Con-quer the City of Samaria An Investigation into the maba-sign in Chronicle 1rdquo Or 80 (2011)423ndash38 Ariel M Bagg Die Assyrer und das Westland Studien zur historischen Geographie undHerrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1 Jt vuZ (Leuven Peeters 2011) 227ndash28 Grabbe AncientIsrael 171 Elayi Sargon II 46ndash47 Thus the Khorsabad Display Inscription i 23 In other texts the wording differs but alwayshas a military flavour This view is accepted by a majority of scholars see eg Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe HistoricalBackground to the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)rdquo Bib (1990) 206ndash25 Tappy Archaeology ofIsraelite Samaria Volume II 558ndash75 Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo Grabbe Ancient Israel192 Elayi Sargon II 48ndash50 M Christine Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Reason for Re-jecting the Hypothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ 64 (2002) 59ndash77 Sung Jin Park ldquoA New Histor-ical Reconstruction of the Fall of Samariardquo Bib 93 (2012) 98ndash106 unconvincingly arguedagainst this view taking their starting point in the Biblical narrative see Frevel Geschichte Isra-els 242 Tappy ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samariardquo

30 Bob Becking

These sources are not reliable descriptions of the event(s) Although I do notthink that the Assyrian takeover of Samaria was a completely peaceful actionI am of the opinion that the aim of the Assyrians was to gain control over thearea with as little damage to it as possible in order to be able to gather asmuch in taxes as possible ndash in the form of food products ndash and to secure theirtrade interests along the via maris⁵⁴ The character of this control can best be la-belled with a term from colonial studies ldquodominance without hegemonyrdquo⁵⁵ TheAssyrians dominated the trade and were the receivers of the agricultural surplusbut their power structure did not influence the area in its remoter parts

7 Event and Waves of History histoireconjuncturelle

Archaeology and climate studies are of great importance for the construction ofprocesses of longue dureacutee in an area The picture that emerges from this type ofanalysis is that of Ancient⁵⁶ Israel as an agricultural society that slowly devel-oped from a loosely connected network of self-supplying communities into amore closely knit network in which trade and surplus production became in-creasingly important to supply the needs of court temple and later the foreignsuzerain⁵⁷

At the level of the histoire conjuncturelle it must be noted that Samaria fellprey to the Neo-Assyrian expansion This expansion had its own internal mech-anism and almost inevitable necessity The will to govern over regions beyondthe border of the Assyrian homeland necessitated building a strong army TheAssyrian armed forces and their campaigns needed to be financed This financialpressure in combination with the growing need for luxury in and around thecourt (including food to feed the otherwise unproductive court officials) wasbasic to the Neo-Assyrian system of raising tribute from conquered areas⁵⁸ Avra-

See Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 481 See Ranajit Guha Dominance without Hegemony History and Power in Colonial India (Cam-bridge MA Harvard University Press 1997) Bagg Die Assyrer und das Westland 301ndash308 Or lsquoAncientrsquo Israel Iron Age Israel Palestine Southern Levant See eg Paula McNutt Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel (Louisville KY Westmin-ster John Knox Press 1999) See eg Juumlrgen Baumlr Der assyrische Tribut und seine Darstellung eine Untersuchung zur im-perialen Ideologie im neuassyrischen Reich (Neukirchen-Vluyn Neukirchener Verlag 1996)Karen Radner ldquoAbgaben an den Koumlnig von Assyrien aus dem In- und Auslandrdquo in Geschenkeund Steuern Zoumllle und Tribute Antike Abgabenformen in Anspruch und Wirklichkeit ed Hilmar


ham Faust has elaborated this view by analysing the Assyrian demand for oliveoil to be supplied from the Ekron area⁵⁹ Supported by an incomparably strongmilitary technology⁶⁰ this fly-wheel raged through the world of the Iron Age IIperiod When this almost unstoppable military machine reached the territoryof the Northern Kingdom of Israel it was only a matter of time till conquest ofSamaria took place I will not argue that the Assyrian take-over of Samariawas an inevitable fact that had to take place History is too much an open proc-ess for such a claim⁶sup1 In hindsight however the end of the Kingdom of Israelseems an appropriate outcome of the political-military game of those days Itis only against the background of this histoire conjuncturelle that the Biblical re-port on this event makes sense

In sum and by way of re-enactment1 Event The inhabitants of the city of Samaria had to bow to the military su-

periority of the Assyrians The death of Shalmaneser V and subsequent dip-lomatic intrigue only led to the delay of the seemingly inevitable After thestruggle parts of the population were deported and new settlers came in

2 Wave The military conquest might not have been inevitable but in view ofthe machinery of Assyrian expansion politics this was an understandableoutcome

3 Longue dureacutee The area maintained its agricultural function Food produc-tion was the basis of its economy The agricultural surplus now had to begiven to foreigners who ruled the area although they were far away

Klinkott Sabine Kubisch and Renate Muumlller-Wollermann (Leiden Brill 2007) 213ndash30 Peter RBedford ldquoThe Assyrian Empirerdquo in The Dynamics of Ancient Empires State Power from Assyriato Byzantium ed Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)30ndash65 Avraham Faust ldquoThe Interests of the Assyrian Empire in the West Olive Oil Production as aTest-Caserdquo JESHO 54 (2011) 62ndash86 See eg Walter Mayer Politik und Kriegskunst der Assyrer (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 1995) There are no such things as lsquolaws of historyrsquo which make events inevitable and necessaryand by which the outcome of a process can be calculated pace Graeme D Snooks The Lawsof History (LondonNew York Routledge 2002)

32 Bob Becking

Part II Approaching the Fall of Samaria fromContemporary Assyrian and EgyptianSources

Jamie Novotny

Contextualizing the Last Days ofthe Kingdom of IsraelWhat Can Assyrian Official InscriptionsTell Us

1 Introduction

Considerable scholarly effort has been made trying to lift the heavy veil shroud-ing the details of the history of the final two decades of the kingdom of Israelincluding the identity of the Assyrian ruler who conquered its capital Samariaand captured its last king Hoshea Because there are significant discrepanciesin extant primary sources in particular between the Old Testament and Assyrianinscriptions scholars have yet to satisfactorily answer the most important ques-tions about this crucial period in the history of the Levant Assyrian sources es-pecially royal inscriptions may provide some key pieces to the puzzle but whatcan they tell us about the last twenty to thirty years of the kingdom of Israel thefall of Samaria and the fate of Hosheasup1 This paper will examine the availableinscriptions of the eighth- and seventh-century Assyrian kings in order to eluci-

Support for my research on Assyrian (and Babylonian) inscriptions is provided by the Alexandervon Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Professor-ship for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumln-chen (Historisches Seminar ndash Abteilung Alte Geschichte) I would like to thank Karen Radner forreading through and commenting on a draft of this manuscript Her time and care are greatlyappreciated Any errors or omissions are solely my responsibility Because this conference vol-ume contains numerous topic-specific studies on the last days of Israel and because this chap-ter is to serve as an introduction to Part I of the proceedings footnotes and bibliography arekept to a minimum For the Assyrian material see the chapters by Eckart Frahm and Karen Rad-ner All dates are BC(E) except of course in bibliographical references

For (general) studies on royal inscriptions see in particular Albert Kirk Grayson ldquoAssyria andBabyloniardquo Or NS 49 (1980) 140ndash93 Johannes Renger ldquoKoumlnigsinschriften B Akkadischrdquo inRlA vol 61ndash2 ed Dietz Otto Edzard (Berlin de Gruyter 1980) 65ndash77 (especially 71ndash77)Hayim Tadmor ldquoPropaganda Literature Historiography Cracking the Code of the AssyrianRoyal Inscriptionsrdquo Assyria 1995 Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-As-syrian Text Corpus Project ed Simo Parpola and Robert MWhiting (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian TextCorpus Project 1997) 325ndash38 and Frederick Mario Fales ldquoAssyrian Royal Inscriptions NewerHorizonsrdquo SAAB 13 (1999ndash2001) 115ndash44

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-003

date what information that genre of Akkadian text can and cannot provide withregard to the history of Israel Special attention will be given to potential lostsources to determine if new Assyrian texts could really help scholars solvesome of the mysteries of the Bible

This paper will serve as a general introduction to the more topic-specific pa-pers given in Part I of this book Nevertheless I do hope to say a few things notcovered in the other chapters As a word of warning at least one section of thispaper will be purely speculative However these conjectures will be deeply root-ed in the extant source material of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II

2 Background Information What Do We Knowabout Shalmaneser Vsup2

Before diving into the heart of matters let me introduce Shalmaneser V the chiefprotagonist of our story according to a Babylonian chronicle the Bible and theclassical historian Josephus

From Babylonian King List A the Ptolemaic Canon and several Neo-Assyr-ian letters we know that the man who would be the fifth Assyrian king with thename Shalmaneser also went by the name Ulūlāyu his nickname or birth namesup3

For details on Shalmaneser VUlūlāyu see Albert Kirk Grayson ldquoAssyria Tiglath-pileser III toSargon II (744ndash705 BC)rdquo in The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and other States of the NearEast from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC The Cambridge Ancient History 32 second ed-ition ed John Boardman et al (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1991) 85ndash86 HeatherD Baker ldquoSalmānu-ašarēdrdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire vol 3I edHeather D Baker (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2002) 1077 no 5 Heather DBaker ldquoSalmaneser Vrdquo in RlA vol 117ndash8 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin de Gruyter 2008)585ndash87 Karen Radner ldquoUlūlāiurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire vol 3IIed Heather D Baker (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2011) 1375 no 3 Hayim Tad-mor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalma-neser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) 14 Karen RadnerldquoShalmaneser V king of Assyria (726ndash722 BC)rdquo in Assyrian Empire Builders (London UniversityCollege London 2012) httpwwwuclacuksargonessentialskingsshalmaneserv (accessed102017) and Keiko Yamada and Shigeo Yamada ldquoShalmaneser V and His Era Revisitedrdquo inlsquoNow It Happened in Those Daysrsquo Studies in Biblical Assyrian and Other Ancient Near EasternHistoriography Presented to Mordechai Cogan on His 75th Birthday eds Amitai Baruchi-UnnaTova Forti Shmuel Ahituv Israel Ephʿal and Jeffrey H Tigay (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns2017) 387ndash442 For the relevant sections of Babylonian King List A and the Ptolemaic Canon see Tadmor andYamada Tiglath-pileser III 15ndash 16 For details on these texts see Jamie Novotny ldquoBabylonianKing List A (BM 033332 Rm 3 005)rdquo in The Royal Inscriptions of Babylonia online (Munich

36 Jamie Novotny

A handful of royal letters attest to the crown prince Ulūlāyu playing an activerole in his fatherrsquos administration particularly in the affairs of the westernpart of the empire His responsibilities included securing sufficient supplies co-ordinating security details for the queen (perhaps his mother) and receiving am-bassadorial delegations visiting the capital Calah (Kalḫu modern Nimrud) Hison-the-job training gave him excellent knowledge of Assyriarsquos western vassalkingdoms and prepared him well for his royal duties once he became king Ac-cording to a Babylonian chronicle Shalmaneser ascended the throne of Assyriawithout opposition shortly after Tiglath-pileser died this was in the year 727⁴

Hard facts about his short reign are rather scarce since textual and archaeo-logical evidence for his stint as king are almost non-existent This is in part dueto that fact that no royal inscription of his has survived apart from a set of lion-shaped weights⁵ The passage recording events of his reign in the EponymChronicle is heavily damaged and the relevant details are completely brokenaway⁶ Nevertheless it is fairly certain he stayed at home during his first yearas king and that military expeditions were conducted in his second third andfourth years on the throne Unfortunately the names of his military targets aremissing The kingdom of Bīt-Ḫumria the Assyrian name for Israel may havebeen named in this source since the Bible (2Kgs 173ndash6 and 2Kgs 189ndash 12) re-cords that Shalmaneser campaigned in that region⁷ As for what happened inhis fifth year as king nothing is preserved in the Eponym Chronicle A Babyloni-an chronicle provides one important piece of information Shalmaneser is report-

Oracc 2016) httporaccmuseumupenneduribokinglistskinglista (accessed 102017) andHenry Heitmann-Gordon ldquoFirst Section of the Ptolemaic Canonrdquo in The Royal Inscriptions ofBabylonia online (Munich Oracc 2016) httporaccmuseumupenneduribokinglistsptolemaiccanon (accessed 102017) For the letters from Calah see Karen Radner ldquoSalmanassar Vin den Nimrud Lettersrdquo AfO 50 (2003ndash4) 95ndash 104 and Mikko Luukko The Correspondence ofTiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from CalahNimrud (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2013)LndashLII and 10ndash 13 nos 8ndash 11 Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley NY Augustin 1975) 73no 1 i 24ndash28 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 18 Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 171ndash81 nos 1ndash9 and Frederick Mario Fales ldquoThe As-syrian Lion-Weights A Further Attemptrdquo in Libiamo nersquo lieti calici Ancient Near Eastern StudiesPresented to Lucio Milano ed Paola Corograve et al (Munster Ugarit-Verlag 2016) 483ndash507 Alan Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian TextCorpus Project 1994) 45ndash46 59 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 17ndash 18 For textual references and bibliography see Ariel M Bagg Die Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen derneuassyrischen Zeit Teil 1 Die Levante (Wiesbaden Reichert 2007) 50 For a recent study of theAssyrian Empire and the west see Ariel M Bagg Die Assyrer und das Westland Studien zur his-torischen Geographie und Herrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1 Jt vuZ (Leuven Peeters 2011)especially 213ndash44


ed to have ravaged Samaria⁸ 2Kgs 17 and 18 and Josephus (Antiquitates JudaicaeIX 15) also credit him with the conquest of Israelrsquos capital inscriptions of his suc-cessor however infer that Sargon II captured Samaria⁹ Exactly when Shalma-neser attacked Israel and when Samaria was captured is uncertain but it issometimes thought that Samaria fell towards the end of his reign possibly inhis fifth year Shalmaneser appears to have added three new provinces to Assyria(Que Samʾal and Samaria)sup1⁰ and he may have besieged the Phoenician cityTyre if the account of Josephus (Antiquitates Judaicae IX 16) is to be believed

No building activity by this Shalmaneser is known so far However a brickfound at Apku modern Tell Abu Marya may belong to him and assuming theattribution proves correct then this brick may attest to construction in that citysup1sup1

The end of Shalmaneserrsquos reign is known only from a text composed underthe auspices of his brother and successorsup1sup2 The ldquoAššur Charterrdquo portrays Shal-maneser as an oppressive ruler who had robbed the citizens of the city ofAššur of their god-given privileges and imposed hard labor upon them BecauseShalmaneser angered the gods he was violently removed from the throne andreplaced by someone more suitable his brother who took the name Šarru-ukīn (Šarru-kēnuŠarru-kīn)sup1sup3 A Babylonian chronicle states that Shalmaneserdied and was succeeded a few days later by Sargonsup1⁴ no reference to the violent

Grayson Chronicles 73 no 1 i 28 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 18 The identity of the Assyrian king who captured Samaria (Shalmaneser V or Sargon II) whetherthe Assyrians conquered that city once or twice and when that city fell are still matters of schol-arly debate Those issues fall outside the scope of the present paper but are addressed elsewherein this volume In sect 43 it is assumed however that Samaria may have succumbed to Assyriawhile Shalmaneser was still on the throne For summaries and assessments of relevant scholarlydiscussion see for example Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fall of Samaria in Light of RecentResearchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 and Kenneth Bergland ldquoAnalysis and Assessment of Chrono-logical Explanations of the Fall of Samariardquo Spes Christiana 22ndash23 (2011ndash 12) 63ndash84 for furtherbibliographical references see n 5 of Frahmrsquos chapter in this volume Karen Radner ldquoProvinz C Assyrienrdquo in RlA vol 111ndash2 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin deGruyter 2006) 62 nos 57ndash59 Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 183ndash84 Henry WF Saggs ldquoHistorical Texts and Fragments of Sargon II of Assyria 1 The lsquoAššur Char-terrsquordquo Iraq 37 (1975) 11ndash20 and Galo W Vera Chamaza ldquoSargon IIrsquos Ascent to the Throne ThePolitical Situationrdquo SAAB 61 (1992) 21ndash33 See also Text 1 in Frahmrsquos chapter in this volume For a discussion about the meaning of Sargonrsquos name (ldquoThe righteous kingrdquo or ldquoHe [= thegod] made firm the kingrdquo) see eg Andreas Fuchs ldquoSargon IIrdquo in RlA vol 121ndash2 ed MichaelP Streck (Berlin de Gruyter 2009) 51ndash53 sect 2 and Andreas Fuchs ldquoŠarru-kēnu Šarru-kīn Šarru-ukīnrdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire vol 3II ed Heather D Baker and Rob-ert D Whiting (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2011) 1239ndash47 no 2 Grayson Chronicles 73 no 1 i 29ndash31 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 18

38 Jamie Novotny

circumstances of his death is given in that sourceWe just have Sargonrsquos word onthe matter

No positively identified inscriptions of Shalmaneser V have survived apartfrom several bilingual Akkadian-Aramaic lion weightssup1⁵ One expects that moreofficial texts of his must have existed in antiquity this is suggested by the factthat inscriptions of other Assyrian kings ndash for example Sennacherib and Esar-haddon ndash were written well before their fifth regnal years as well as in theirfifth year as kingsup1⁶ Because he is known to have carried out at least three mili-tary expeditions (according to the Eponym Chronicle) it would be highly unusu-al had Shalmaneser not taken the opportunity to record his deeds Althoughthere is a near complete gap in the textual record for the five years that Shalma-neser was king we can still speculate about what he may have recorded abouthimself and what form those royal compositions may have taken

To put our conjectured now-lost sources into context we must dive into theextant corpora of Shalmaneserrsquos immediate predecessor and successor Let usstart with those of Tiglath-pileser III

3 Brief Overview of the Official Inscriptionsof Tiglath-pileser IIIsup1⁷

Thirty-four or thirty-five inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III excluding those ofhis wife Yabacirc and several of his subordinates are known The complete corpusof texts has been recently published by Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada forthe Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period Project directed by Grant

See n 5 above Eg A Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of As-syria (704ndash681 BC) Part 1 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2012) 29ndash69 nos 1ndash4 and ErleLeichty The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon King of Assyria (680ndash669 BC) (Winona LakeIN Eisenbrauns 2011) 119ndash34 nos 57ndash59 For the inscriptions of Sargon II written near the be-ginning of his reign see Texts 1ndash3 in Frahmrsquos chapter For details on Tiglath-pileser III and his reign see eg Grayson ldquoTiglath-pileser III to Sar-gon IIrdquo 71ndash85 Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 12ndash 14 Heather D Baker ldquoTukultī-apil-Ešarrardquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire vol 3II ed Heather D Baker (Hel-sinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2011) 1329ndash31 no 3 Heather D Baker ldquoTiglatpileserIIIrdquo in RlA vol 141ndash2 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin de Gruyter 2006) 21ndash4 and Karen Rad-ner ldquoTiglath-pileser III king of Assyria (744ndash727 BC)rdquo in Assyrian Empire Builders (LondonUniversity College London 2012) httpwwwuclacuksargonessentialskingstiglatpileseriii(accessed 102017)


Frame of the University of Pennsylvaniasup1⁸ These self-aggrandizing compositionsare found on a variety of stone clay and metal objects The most important arewritten on wall slabs with reliefs threshold slabs mud bricks clay tablets and astele The majority were discovered in the citadel of Calah in the ruins of theCentral and South-West Palaces while a few others were found at Aššur ArslanTash and western Iran Following Tadmor scholars generally divide this kingrsquostexts into three categories (1) chronologically-arranged annals (2) geographical-ly-organized summary inscriptions and (3) miscellaneous texts which includelabels and building inscriptionssup1⁹

The most important inscription of Tiglath-pileser is the so-called ldquoCalah An-nalsrdquosup2⁰ This modern conflation of several ancient texts is a long running annal-istic account of the events of Tiglath-pileserrsquos reign from his accession year to hisfifteenth or seventeenth year as kingsup2sup1 Copies of it were originally inscribed onthe walls of rooms and corridors of the Central Palace usually in a horizontalband separating the sculpted upper and lower registerssup2sup2 Due in part to thefact that the seventh-century Assyrian king Esarhaddon dismantled the CentralPalace and reused some of the sculpted wall slabs in his own palace most ofTiglath-pileserrsquos annals have not survivedsup2sup3 One third if not less of the CalahAnnals are known today and the known pieces may represent parts of four or

For details on the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (with references to previous scholarly lit-erature) see Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III and its online version on Royal Inscriptionsof the Neo-Assyrian Period online httporaccmuseumupennedurinaprinap1 (accessed 102017) Much of the contents of that volume is based on Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Ti-glath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Edition with Introductions Translations and Commentary(Jerusalem The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1994) Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 22ndash25 This classification of the corpus is main-tained in Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III see pp 4ndash 10 of that volume Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 27ndash89 216ndash21 and 238ndash59 and Tadmor and Ya-mada Tiglath-pileser III 4ndash8 and 19ndash79 nos 1ndash34 See also John Malcolm Russell The Writingon the Wall Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 1999) 88ndash96 For details see Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 4ndash7 Tadmorrsquos designations for theinscriptions are followed here For drawings showing the position of the text of the Calah Annals on the extant wall slabssee Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 241ndash56 (= Figures 11ndash2) Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 10ndash12 and Richard David Barnett and MargareteFalkner The Sculptures of Aššur-naṣir-apli II (883ndash859 BC) Tiglath-pileser III (745ndash727 BC)Esarhaddon (681ndash669 BC) from the Central and South-West Palaces at Nimrud (London Trust-ees of the British Museum 1962) 1ndash7 and 20ndash23 provide good information about the poor con-dition in which Tiglath-pileserrsquos palace and its inscribed and sculpted wall slabs were discov-ered See also sect 41 (with n 49) below

40 Jamie Novotny

five different texts The surviving material is divided into three hypothetical ser-ies Series A the ldquoHall of the Seven-Line Seriesrdquo Series B the ldquoHall of theTwelve-Line Seriesrdquo and Series C the ldquoColossal Slabs (Series)rdquo When all threeseries are combined the extant text of the Annals preserves parts of the pro-logue reports of Tiglath-pileserrsquos 1stndash3rd (745ndash743) 7thndash9th (739ndash737) 11th(735) 13th (733) and 15th (731) regnal years and an account of the constructionof Tiglath-pileserrsquos palace This badly damaged set of inscriptions narrated themilitary achievements of every year of the kingrsquos reign up to his fifteenth or sev-enteenth regnal year The Calah Annals are one of the principal Assyrian sourcesthat provide evidence about the last days of Israel Of note Menahem of Samariais said to have paid tribute to Assyria and sixteen districts of Bīt-Ḫumria are re-ported to have been destroyedsup2⁴

Annals of the king were written on other media including provincial stelesand rock reliefssup2⁵ The two best surviving examples are a stele discovered in west-ern Iran and a panel carved into a rock face near Mila Mergi in Kurdistan Copiesof Tiglath-pileserrsquos annals would have been inscribed on clay foundation docu-ments that would have been deposited into the structures of buildings construct-ed or repaired by him No such object bearing his annals is known todaysup2⁶ Someof these now-lost documents are presumed to have been destroyed in antiquityby Esarhaddon when he built his own royal residence at Calah or in moderntimes by local inhabitants or nineteenth century excavatorssup2⁷ There is littledoubt in my mind that such texts existed despite their current lack in the ar-chaeological record

Several of Tiglath-pileserrsquos so-called ldquoSummary Inscriptionsrdquo are alsoknownsup2⁸ These compositions were written on stone pavement slabs and claytablets near the end of his reign probably late in 729 or in 728 and they givea summary of his military achievements by geographical region The reacutesumeacuteof victories usually began with events in the south and then continued withthose of the east and north and concluded with events in the west The narrative

Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 46 no 14 line 10 61ndash63 nos 21ndash22 70 no 27 line 3and 77 no 32 line 2 Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 90ndash116 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-piles-er III 8ndash9 and 79ndash94 nos 35ndash38 This might not be entirely true as a small clay fragment found at Aššur (VAT 12938) might beinscribed with a version of Tiglath-pileserrsquos annals Too little of that inscription is preserved toproperly classify it See n 23 above and sect 41 below Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 117ndash204 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-piles-er III 9ndash10 and 94ndash 138 nos 39ndash52


divides the accomplishments of the king as follows (1) the Babylonia wars(2) the Zagros campaigns (3) the wars with Urarṭu and its allies (4) the conquestof northern Syrian states and (5) the military operations in southern Syria Pal-estine and Arabia Two of the summary inscriptions report on Israel Tiglath-pi-leser claims to have conquered parts of Bīt-Ḫumria as well as states that Pekahwas killed and Hoshea was installed as king in his steadsup2⁹ Although this type ofinscription is less descriptive than annalistic texts summary inscriptions never-theless provide important historical information and supplement and compli-ment details provided by the annals

With regard to the miscellaneous category of inscriptionssup3⁰ I will brieflymention just one type epigraphs Three epigraphs of Tiglath-pileser III surviveand these one-word labels help us identify cities shown in reliefs being besiegeddestroyed and lootedsup3sup1 This text type is extremely important as such texts oftenname places not mentioned in other textssup3sup2 This is the case for all three epi-graphs of Tiglath-pileser

Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 106 no 42 lines 15primebndash19primea and 112 no 44 lines17primendash 18prime On the death (murderassassination) or overthrow of Pekah in these texts see TadmorTiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 141 (note to line 17prime) 277 and 281 and Tadmor and YamadaTiglath-pileser III 106 (note to no 42 line 17prime) According to 2Kgs 1525 Pekah was assassinatedby Hoshea a man whom Tiglath-pileser claims to have installed as king Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 205ndash 15 and Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileserIII 10 and 139ndash54 nos 53ndash64 Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 143ndash46 nos 55ndash57 The city Gazru in text no 57 isprobably to be identified with biblical Gezer an Israelite city located in the Vale of Ayalon Thiscity was probably captured in 733 Although annalistic texts and summary inscriptions name many important opponents it iscertain that those inscriptions did not record the name of every person who was defeated andevery place that was captured Therefore many epigraphs accompanying reliefs play an impor-tant role in reconstructing Assyrian history since they provide information intentionally omittedin longer descriptions of military expeditions This is well attested throughout the Neo-Assyrianperiod The best-known example is the depiction of Sennacheribrsquos siege of Lachish This reliefwhich adorned the walls of Room XXXVI of the Southwest Palace at Nineveh shows many de-tails of the hard-fought siege of a well-fortified Judean city (not mentioned elsewhere in Senna-cheribrsquos annals) and its aftermath For the Lachish reliefs see Richard David Barnett ErikaBleibtreu and Geoffrey Turner Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Ninevehvol 2 (London Trustees of the British Museum 1998) 322ndash52

42 Jamie Novotny

4 Brief Overview of the Official Inscriptionsof Sargon IIsup3sup3

To date approximately 125 inscriptions of Sargon II excluding those of his wifeAtalya and several of his officials are known Unfortunately the complete cor-pus of texts has yet to be published in a single place Grant Framersquos manuscriptof this kingrsquos inscriptions are in an advanced state of preparation and should ap-pear in 2019 (or 2020)sup3⁴ The major texts from Khorsabad Nineveh and Aššurhowever have been carefully edited by Andreas Fuchssup3⁵ This rich source mate-rial is found on a plethora of stone clay and metal objects The most importantcompositions were written on wall slabs with reliefs threshold slabs human-headed bull colossi prisms cylinders and provincial steles Given this kingrsquos ef-forts to build himself a new royal city it is little surprise that about half (46) ofthe inscriptions were found at Dūr-Šarrukīn with the highest percentage comingfrom his own palace As one expects from a late-eighth-century Assyrian kingmany inscriptions of his were discovered in the ruins of Aššur Calah and Nine-veh In addition building inscriptions of his come from Babylon and Uruk Bab-ylonian cities where he sponsored building and steles of his commemoratingvictories on the battlefields have been found in Cyprus Iran Israel Syria andTurkey Sargonrsquos scribes wrote out detailed chronologically-arranged annalsgeographically-organized summary inscriptions labels (including epigraphs)dedicatory texts and building inscriptions In addition a few unique composi-tions have survived for example ldquoSargonrsquos Letter to Aššurrdquo which reports on acampaign conducted against Urarṭu and the city Muṣaṣir and the ldquoAššur Char-

For details on Sargon II and his reign see eg Grayson ldquoTiglath-pileser III to Sargon IIrdquo86ndash 102 Fuchs ldquoSargon IIrdquo 51ndash61 Fuchs ldquoŠarru-kēnu Šarru-kīn Šarru-ukīnrdquo 1239ndash47no 2 Karen Radner ldquoSargon II king of Assyria (721ndash705 BC)rdquo in Assyrian Empire Builders (Lon-don University College London 2012) httpwwwuclacuksargonessentialskingssargonii(accessed 102017) and Sarah C Melville The Campaigns of Sargon II King of Assyria 721ndash705BC (Norman OK University of Oklahoma Press 2016) See also Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume I would like to thank Grant Frame for allowing me use of his unpublished manuscript TheRoyal Inscriptions of Sargon II King of Assyria (721ndash705 BC) prior to its publication as volume 2in the series The Royal Inscription of the Neo-Assyrian Period Access to his Sargon material fa-cilitated the writing of this section Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (Goumlttingen Cuvillier Verlag 1994)and Andreas Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711 vChr nach Prismenfragmenten aus Ninive undAssur (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1998) This section overlaps to some extentFrahmrsquos chapter in this volume see that chapter for further details


terrdquo which describes his succession to the thronesup3⁶ Most of the dateable textswere written during the second half of his reign between his eighth regnalyear 714 and his sixteenth regnal year 706 at least one text was written atthe very beginning of his reign probably late in his second regnal year 720sup3⁷

Following in the footsteps of his predecessors including the powerful ninth-century ruler Ashurnasirpal II Sargon had his annals inscribed on the walls ofhis palace the slabs of Rooms IIV XIII XIV and Court VII bore this textsup3⁸ Eachof the aforementioned rooms contained a complete version of the inscriptionThese annalistic texts were always written in a broad horizontal band separatingthe elaborately sculpted upper and lower registers The width of the inscribedband and thereby the number of lines per column depended on the size ofthe room for example the middle register in Room II accommodated thirteenlines of text while the central band in Room V was wide enough for seventeenlines of text Unfortunately large passages are now missing from each version ofSargonrsquos annals none are fully preserved This lengthy text recorded in chrono-logical order the deeds of his first fourteen years and thus provides a compre-hensive picture of Sargonrsquos seventeen-year reign Unfortunately many of the de-tails of his second regnal year when Samaria and Bīt-Ḫumria participated in arebellion organized by Hamath are very fragmentarily preserved in this textEckart Frahm in the following chapter will provide details about the campaignof 720 as well as editions of the relevant passages These versions of the annalsconcluded with a description of the creation of this kingrsquos new capital alongwith the construction and decoration of Sargonrsquos own palace This group oftexts was composed towards the end of his reign around 707 his fifteenth regnal

For ldquoSargonrsquos Letter to Aššurrdquo see Franccedilois Thureau-Dangin Une relation de la huitiegravemecampagne de Sargon (Paris Geuthner 1912) and Walter Mayer Assyrien und Urarṭu I DerAchte Feldzug Sargons II im Jahr 714 vChr (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 2013) For the ldquoAššur Char-terrdquo see Saggs ldquoHistorical Texts and Fragments of Sargon II of Assyriardquo 11ndash20 Vera ChamazaldquoSargon IIrsquos Ascent to the Thronerdquo 21ndash33 and Text 1 in Frahmrsquos chapter For a helpful chart of the dates of the most important inscriptions of Sargon see Fuchs ldquoSar-gon IIrdquo 52 The ldquoTell Asharneh Stelerdquo and ldquoTell Tayinat Stelerdquo (Texts 2ndash3 in Frahmrsquos chapter)probably also date to around 720 For details on these two texts see Grant Frame ldquoThe TellAcharneh Stela of Sargon II of Assyriardquo in Tell Acharneh 1998ndash2004 ed Michel Fortin (Turnh-out Brepols 2006) 49ndash68 esp 49ndash52 and Jacob Lauinger and Stephen Batiuk ldquoA Stele ofSargon II at Tell Tayinatrdquo ZA 105 (2015) 54ndash68 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 82ndash188 See also Grant Frame ldquoThe Orderof the Wall Slabs with Sargonrsquos Annals in Room V of the Palace at Khorsabadrdquo in From theUpper Sea to the Lower Sea Studies on the History of Assyria and Babylonia in Honour of AKGrayson ed Grant Frame (Istanbul and Leiden Netherlands Institute for the Near East2004) 89ndash 102 Russell The Writing on the Wall 111ndash 15 and Texts 7 and 10 in Frahmrsquos chapter

44 Jamie Novotny

year compare the Calah Annals of Tiglath-pileser III which were composedaround his seventeenth year as king Other annalistic texts of his are attestedand these are preserved on prisms prismatic cylinders tablets and stelesmany are badly damaged with much of their original contents missingsup3⁹

Another important text of Sargon inscribed on the walls of his palace is theso-called ldquoGreat Display Inscriptionrdquo⁴⁰ Copies of it were found in Rooms I IVVII VIII and X and unlike the annals this composition described the militaryexpeditions geographically starting with the east and ending with the southeastIn this inscription Sargon states that he plundered Samaria and the entire landof Bīt-Ḫumria A shorter version of this text the so-called ldquoSmall Display Inscrip-tionrdquo is also known and it likewise mentions the defeat of the inhabitants ofBīt-Ḫumria and Samaria in 720⁴sup1 Both compositions were written in or afterhis fifteenth year (707)

Sargon had his scribes write out at least one inscription that is a perfectblend of a display and building inscription this is the so-called ldquoBull Inscrip-tionrdquo⁴sup2 Numerous human-headed bull colossi flanking the prominent gatewaysat Khorsabad including several from Sargonrsquos palace are inscribed with a textthat included a short geographical summary of this rulerrsquos victories and alengthy account of the creation of Dūr-Šarrukīn With one known exceptionthe Bull Inscription was distributed between a pair of bulls Each colossushad two rectangular panels one below its belly and one between its hindlegs and was inscribed with approximately half of the text Thus the completetext required two bulls and four inscribed surfaces The Door M Room VIII co-lossi however were different each of those bulls bore a complete inscriptionwritten in two inscribed surfaces The information included in this text which

For example see Cyril J Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954)173ndash201 (= ldquoNimrud Prismrdquo) Louis D Levine Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae from Iran (Toronto RoyalOntario Museum 1972) (= ldquoNajafehabad Stelerdquo) Franccediloise Malbran-Labat ldquoSection 4 Inscrip-tion assyrienne (No 4001)rdquo in Kition dans les textes Kition-Bamboula 5 ed Marguerite Yon(Paris Eacuteditions Recherche sur les Civilisations 2004) 345ndash54 (= ldquoCyprus Stelerdquo) Fuchs Die In-schriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 29ndash44 and 289ndash96 (= ldquoKhorsabad Cylinderrdquo) and FuchsDie Annalen des Jahres 711 v Chr (= ldquoNineveh Prismrdquo ldquoAššur Prismrdquo) See Texts 4 6 8 and13 in Frahmrsquos chapter Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 189ndash248 and 343ndash55 and Russell TheWriting on the Wall 111ndash5 See also Texts 9 and 12 in Frahmrsquos chapter Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 75ndash81 and 307ndash 12 See also Text 16 inFrahmrsquos chapter Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 60ndash74 and 303ndash307 See also Russell TheWriting on the Wall 103ndash 108 and Text 17 in Frahmrsquos chapter


was written in or after his fifteenth year (707) compliments what was recorded inthe annals and display inscriptions

Sargonrsquos successes on the battlefield and his building activities at his newcapital are also recorded on numerous pavement slabs five or possibly six dif-ferent inscriptions are known from twenty-one or twenty-two threshold slabs⁴sup3Military matters are mentioned but only in a very cursory fashion The longest ofthe threshold inscriptions refers to the conquest of Bīt-Ḫumria and Samaria

As mentioned earlier there are many other sub-genres of official inscriptionscomposed during the reign of Sargon As for building inscriptions texts record-ing only the construction of a palace or temple these are attested on a wider va-riety of objects in particular clay cylinders and stone and metal foundation tab-lets We know from mid-nineteenth century French excavations at Khorsabadthat such (stone and metal) tablets were sometimes placed inside alabaster cof-fers and deposited within the walls of buildings⁴⁴ One unique royal compositionfrom this time is a text often referred to as ldquoSargonrsquos Eighth Campaignrdquo ldquoSar-gonrsquos Letter to Godrdquo or ldquoSargonrsquos Letter to Aššurrdquo⁴⁵ The inscription consists ofan initial address to the god Aššur the body of the text which records in minutedetail a campaign directed against Urarṭu and the city Muṣaṣir in the rulerrsquoseighth regnal year (713) and a concluding statementcolophon This royal reportis generally classified as a letter to a god a rarely attested genre of text and it issometimes thought ldquonot to be deposited in silence in the sanctuary but to be ac-tually read to a public that was to react directly to their contentsrdquo and that ldquotheyreplace in content and most probably in form the customary oral report of theking or his representative on the actual campaign to the city and the priesthoodof the capitalrdquo⁴⁶

Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 249ndash75 and 356ndash63 See also Text 18 inFrahmrsquos chapter Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 45ndash52 and 296ndash300 These tablets made ofgold (AO 19933 formerly Nap III 2897) silver (AO 21371 formerly Nap III 2898) bronze (AO21370 formerly Nap III 2900) and magnesite (Nap III 2899) were discovered in 1854 insidealabaster coffers embedded in the mud-brick wall between Rooms 17 and 19 of Sargonrsquos palaceat Dūr-Šarrukīn See n 36 above A Leo Oppenheim ldquoThe City of Assur in 714 B Crdquo JNES 19 (1960) 143With regard to lettersto gods see eg Rykle Borger ldquoGottesbriefrdquo in RlA vol 38 ed Ernst Weidner and Wolframvon Soden (Berlin de Gruyter 1971) 575ndash76 and Oppenheim ldquoThe City of Assur in 714 BCrdquo 133ndash47

46 Jamie Novotny

5 Conjectured now-lost Assyrian inscriptions andtheir contents

Now that I have given a brief overview of the most important extant Assyrian in-scriptions from 744 to 705 let me address what now-lost sources may have toldus about the end of the kingdom of Israel

51 Lost inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III

Compared to kings like Sargon II and Sennacherib or even Esarhaddon relative-ly few inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III especially from his own palace have sur-vived Now-lost texts of his or passages of known texts that are no longer pre-served would have provided some information about Bīt-Ḫumria and its rulersPeqah and Hoshea Annalistic texts including now-lost portions of the CalahAnnals would have provided many details about Tiglath-pileserrsquos western cam-paigns ndash which took place during his eleventh twelfth and thirteenth regnalyears ndash and thus would have provided the Assyrian point of view of events re-corded in 2Kgs 15 and 16 These texts would have contained more informationthan what is already known from contemporary summary inscriptions At pres-ent no annalistic accounts for the years 734 and 732 are extant and what is pre-served for the year 733 is too badly damaged for proper assessment⁴⁷ Tiglath-pi-leserrsquos annals based on statements in two summary inscriptions would verylikely have described or mentioned Pekahrsquos removal from the throne andorhis deathassassination It would have been nice to have had contemporary con-firmation of the information given in 2Kgs 1525 which states that Hoshea mur-dered his successor On the other hand it is possible that Assyrian texts wouldhave credited Pekahrsquos death to Tiglath-pileser as he is the central figure of his

The relevant section of one version of the Calah Annals reads ldquohellip [hellip] without hellip [hellip I utterlydemolished hellip] of sixteen dis[tricts of the land Bīt-Ḫumria (Israel) I carried off (to Assyria) hellip]capti[ves from hellip] 226 [captives from hellip hellip] captives [from hellip] 400 [(and hellip) captives from hellip]656 cap[tives from the city Sahellip hellip] (altogether) 13520 [people hellip] with their belongings [I hellipthe cities Arumacirc (and) Marum (hellip) which are] sit[uated in] rugged mountainsrdquo (Tadmor and Ya-mada Tiglath-pileser III 61 no 21 lines 1primendash11prime) Another version of the annals has ldquo[hellip] hellip [hellip] hellip[hellip] I en[veloped] him [like] a (dense) fog [hellip I] ut[terly demolished hellip of sixteen] districts of theland Bīt-Ḫum[ria (Israel) I carried off (to Assyria) hellip captives from the city hellip]baracirc 625 captivesfrom the city hellipa[hellip hellip captives from the city] Ḫinatuna 650 captives from the city Ku[hellip hellip cap-tives from the city Ya]ṭbite 656 captives from the city Sahellip[hellip hellip with their belongings I hellip] thecities Arumacirc (and) Marum [hellip]rdquo (Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 62 no 22 lines 1primendash8primea)


self-aggrandizing compositions⁴⁸ Based on what little is preserved in the CalahAnnals for the year 733 and what is recorded in extant summary inscriptions theannals would have provided some details about the Israelite cities and districtsconquered and the number of people deported we do know that sixteen dis-tricts of Bīt-Ḫumria were ravaged by the Assyrian army Now-lost annalistictexts written closer to the events than the Calah Annals may have given more de-tails Such inscriptions may have been written on steles andor on (clay andorstone) foundation documents I assume that Tiglath-pileser had texts depositedin the walls of his palace and that many of these foundation documents werelost or destroyed when Esarhaddon had that royal residence dismantled tomake use of its building materials⁴⁹ Exposure to the elements and other lootingsof that building ancient and modern likely played a part in the near absence ofTiglath-pileserrsquos foundation documents today the few foundation tablets of his

Regarding the relevant passage in one of Tiglath-pileserrsquos summary inscriptions (Tadmorand Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 106 no 42 line 17prime) Tadmor (Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria141) correctly points out ldquo[hellip]-du-⸢x1⸣-⸢x2⸣ The possible restoration of the verb describing Peqahrsquosfate is still a riddle DU is the only completely preserved sign followed by KU (or UK) and a traceof another sign One might restore [i]-du-[ku-ma] or even [a]-du-[uk-ma] but in Smithrsquos draftthere is space to restore a longer word Rostrsquos is-ku-pu-ma is entirely conjectural According to2Kgs 1525 Peqah was assassinated by Hosheardquo For details see Tadmor Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria 10ndash 12 and Barnett and FalknerCentral and South-West Palaces at Nimrud 1ndash7 and 20ndash23 The best description of the stateof affairs in the Central Palace is provided by Austen Henry Layard for a group of slabs discov-ered there ldquoWalls of unbaked bricks could still be traced but the slabs with which they hadbeen paneled were no longer in their places being scattered about without order and lyingmostly with their faces on the flooring of baked bricks Upon them were both sculptures and in-scriptions Slab succeeded to slab and when I had removed nearly twenty tombs and clearedaway the earth from a space of about fifty feet square the ruins which had been thus uncov-ered presented a very singular appearance Above one hundred slabs were exposed to viewpacked in rows one against the other as slabs in a stone-cutterrsquos yard or as leaves of a giganticbook Every slab was sculptured and as they were placed in a regular series according to thesubjects upon them it was evident that they had been moved in the order in which they stoodfrom their original positions against the walls of sundried brick and had been left as foundpreparatory to their removal elsewhere hellip These sculptures resembled in many places someof the bas-reliefs found in the south-west palace in which the sculptured faces of the slabswere turned it will be remembered towards the walls of unbaked brick It appeared thereforethat the centre building had been destroyed to supply materials for the construction of the moresouthern edificerdquo Excerpted from Austen Henry Layard Nineveh and Its Remains A Narrative ofan Expedition to Assyria during the years 1845 1846 amp 1847 vol 2 (London John Murray 1849)19ndash20 For images of a trench with a deposit of Tiglath-pileserrsquos reliefs see Richard SobolewskildquoThe Polish Work at Nimrud Ten Years of Excavation and Study ZA 71 (181) fig 7 and [anon-ymous] ldquoNimrudrdquo inWCieniu Wojny (httpheritagepcmauweduplen accessed 102017) svArchaeological Sites Nimrud

48 Jamie Novotny

that we now have are all summary inscriptions and these were found elsewhereat Calah in the South-East Palace and in the temple of the god Nabucirc (Ezida)

As for missing information in summary inscriptions better preserved textsmight have clarified who killed Pekah Tiglath-pileser Hoshea or frightenedmembers of the Israelite court and elite

52 Lost Inscriptions of Sargon II

Jumping ahead to the reign of Sargon II there is a gap in the textual record atleast up to his eighth year (713) Most extant inscriptions of his referring to Sa-maria date to Sargonrsquos final years on the throne when his annals and displayinscriptions were engraved on the walls of his palace⁵⁰ Several texts from hissecond andor third year as king also record the defeat of the inhabitants of Sa-maria All of the known references to Israelrsquos capital in this corpus of texts are tothat cityrsquos participation in an anti-Assyrian rebellion that took place in 720 Ear-lier versions of the annals those written on steles and clay foundation recordsmight have provided us with only a few more details about what Sargon did inthe Levant during his second regnal year (720) thus giving us only a slightly bet-ter picture of the post-fall-of-Samaria landscape and the anti-Assyrian pockets ofresistance in the Levant Because the Great Display Inscription and a version ofthe kingrsquos annals written on clay prisms discovered at Calah a text written in theyear 706 contain rather descriptive accounts of the defeat of the inhabitants ofSamaria I have my doubts that yet-to-be-discovered inscriptions of Sargonwould have revealed more than what the known texts already tell us Perhapsthose lost inscriptions would have recorded a different number of deporteesand chariots carried off to Assyria For example some texts states that the Assyr-ians took 27290 inhabitants and 50 chariots while others appear to increasethose numbers to 47280 (reading not entirely certain) and 200 respectively⁵sup1

For editions of the relevant passages concerning Samaria and Bīt-Ḫumria see Frahmrsquos chap-ter in this volume The reading of the number in Nimrud Prism iv 31 is uncertain Frahm (this volume) reads itas [2]7 LIM 2 ME 80 (ldquo[2]7280rdquo) while Nadav Naʾaman reads it as [4]7 LIM 2 ME 80 (ldquo[4]7280rdquo)See Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Number of Deportees from Samaria in the Nimrud Prisms of SargonIIrdquo NABU 2000 1 no 1 Unfortunately the original object (IM 67661 ND 2601 + ND 3401 + ND3403 + ND 3417) which is now in the Iraq Museum (Baghdad) could not be checked to verifythe reading of the now-damaged number The number in Gaddrsquos copy looks more like [2]7than [4]7 see Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo pl XLVI


53 Lost inscriptions of Shalmaneser V

Assuming Shalmaneser V followed in the footsteps of his predecessors we ex-pect that he recorded his military conquests and building activities on a varietyof clay stone and metal objects If we look at what is preserved for other eighth-and seventh-century Assyrian rulers it is clear that kings started having theirscribes writing compositions in their names the first chance they got For exam-ple Sargon recorded the defeats of Elam and Hamath in inscriptions written inor just after his second year (720)⁵sup2 Sennacherib described his successes in Bab-ylonia in texts composed during his third year (702)⁵sup3 and Ashurbanipal comme-morated the installation of his brother as the king of Babylon and the return ofthe god Marduk in an inscription written shortly after ascending the throne (early668)⁵⁴ It has sometimes been suggested that because Shalmaneser reigned onlyfive years that he did not have time to have any inscriptions written in hisname⁵⁵ That proposal is not very plausible since texts of other kings areknown from their first years on the throne and since Shalmaneser is known tohave conducted no less than three campaigns (according to the Eponym Chroni-cle)⁵⁶ However this would certainly be the case if one was referring to annalistictexts and summary inscriptions carved on wall and pavement slabs It is clearfrom the extant texts of his father and brother that such monumental inscrip-tions were composed after sitting on the throne for more than a decade Thusgiven Shalmaneserrsquos five-year tenure as king we should only expect more mod-est texts in particular annals written on foundation documents and stelesbuilding texts written on foundation documents and bricks as well as royal ded-ications and proprietary labels written on a wide variety of objects includingbronze lion weights Apart from a set of weights⁵⁷ none of these objects have sur-vived So what happened to them

Let me try to answer that question before diving into what the texts mighthave included Many of Shalmaneserrsquos foundations documents may have suf-fered at the hands of his successors (Sargon II and Esarhaddon in particular)

See nn 36ndash37 above See n 16 above Jamie Novotny Selected Royal Inscriptions of Assurbanipal L3 L4 LET Prism I Prism T andRelated Texts (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2014) xvindashxvii 77ndash80 and 96ndash99 no 18 This textis commonly referred to as the ldquoL[ondon]4 Inscriptionrdquo or ldquoAshurbanipalrsquos School Days Inscrip-tionrdquo Compare Grayson ldquoTiglath-pileser III to Sargon IIrdquo 85 See n 6 above See n 5 above

50 Jamie Novotny

and thus did not survive antiquity At Calah his inscriptions may have been re-moved from their original locations when Esarhaddon decided to build a palacefor himself This seventh-century ruler made extensive use of the limestone slabsdecorating the walls and floors of Tiglath-pileserrsquos palace⁵⁸ Esarhaddon had theunfinished royal residence of his great grandfather dismantled numerous wallslabs transported further south and packed in rows one against the otherThe slabs that were installed in the South-West Palace before Esarhaddonrsquosdeath had their sculptured surfaces face the mudbrick wall in order to leavetheir uninscribed surfaces exposed In a few instances the slabs were re-cutto make them fit their new spaces⁵⁹ Any foundation document deposited inthe Central Palace may not have been treated with respect If Shalmaneserhad continued the work of his father at Calah then any inscribed object of hisin the Central Palace may have been removed during the demolition or left tothe elements⁶⁰ Thus it is possible that many of Shalmaneserrsquos inscriptions dis-appeared or were placed elsewhere in a location that has yet to be discoveredduring Esarhaddonrsquos reign Moreover given the tenor of the Aššur Charter thereis a possibility that Sargon had his brotherrsquos texts intentionally destroyed Thenear complete absence of official inscriptions from Shalmaneserrsquos reign maybe due to Sargonrsquos systematic attempt to erase any trace of his brotherrsquos accom-plishments as king this would have included destroying Shalmaneserrsquos founda-tion records Of course there are many other possible scenarios leading to thenear complete absence of inscriptions of Shalmaneser⁶sup1

See above sect41 (especially n 49) Further details about the reuse of earlier material in theSouth-West Palace can be found in Barnett and Falkner Central and South-West Palaces at Nim-rud 23ndash30 which excerpt Layardrsquos descriptions in Nineveh and Its Remains 1ndash2 According to Layard Nineveh and Its Remains 2 35 some of the edges of the orthostats ldquohadbeen cut away several letters of the inscriptions being destroyed in order to make the stones fitinto the wallrdquo In the ninth and eighth centuries Assyrian kings appear not to have deposited many clayfoundation records in their royal residences if those palaces had copies of annals and summa-rydisplay inscriptions prominently inscribed on sculpted orthostats No clay foundation docu-ments of Ashurnasirpal II have so far been found in the North-West Palace at Calah howeversome clay cylinders of Sargon II (the ldquoKhorsabad Cylinderrdquo) have been discovered in thatkingrsquos palace at Dūr-Šarrukīn None of the summary inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser written onclay tablets (assumed here to be foundation documents rather than archival copies) were discov-ered in the Central Palace which could have been the result of their removal by Esarhaddon One possibility is that Shalmaneser made only relatively minor repairs to buildings andwalls worked on by his father and therefore did not have foundation records deposited inthose structures Compare for example Aššur-etel-ilāni who restored a few rooms of theNabucirc temple (Ezida) at Calah and left his mark only in the form of inscribed bricks It is alsolikely that some of the temples palaces and walls worked on by Shalmaneser were subsequent-


As for the contents and media of these hypothetical texts I tentatively sug-gest that Shalmaneserrsquos scribes wrote out annalistic texts dedicatory inscrip-tions building inscriptions and proprietary labels Annalistic texts may havebeen inscribed on stele or on clay foundation tablets In my opinion prismsand cylinders were probably not used because tablets were the primary choiceof foundation document between 1076 and 721⁶sup2

We know that Shalmaneser led at least three campaigns and certainly hisscribes would have described one or more of these Because the targets of theexpeditions are not known apart from Bīt-Ḫumria and Samaria we cannot spec-ulate too much about the contents of this kingrsquos now-lost compositions Earlyversions of Shalmaneserrsquos annals those written in 725 or 724 may have descri-bed the destruction of Israel and may have included a statement about its lastkingrsquos anti-Assyrian behavior since the siege of Samaria is said to have lastedthree years this campaign likely took place during this kingrsquos second or thirdyear Assuming such accounts existed contemporary texts would have presum-ably given us a more comprehensive view of the last days of Israel and may haveconfirmed or contradicted information provided in 2Kgs 17 and 18 includingHoshearsquos capture prior to the siege of Samaria Given the fact that Assyriankings generally avoided referring to unfinished business for example in-prog-

ly rebuiltrestoredrepaired by Sargon II who did not return inscriptions of his brother that hisworkmen had found to their original spots as many inscriptions request of their successors butrather had them destroyed This might explain why no inscriptions of Shalmaneser have beendiscovered in the ruins of the Aššur temple (Eḫursaggalkurkurra) at Aššur or the Nabucirc temple(Ezida) at Calah assuming of course that this Assyrian king undertook such projects Moreoverit is likely that the bricks used for Shalmaneserrsquos repairs were not inscribed (or stamped) Assyr-ian kings did not always have inscriptions placed on bricks as is clear from eighth- and seventh-century repairs made to the aforementioned Ezida temple no inscribed bricks of Sargon II Sen-nacherib Esarhaddon Ashurbanipal or Sicircn-šarru-iškun have been found in that temple For thebuilding history of Ezida see Jamie Novotny and Greta Van Buylaere ldquoSicircn-šarru-iškun and Ezidain Calahrdquo in Homeland and Exile Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of Buste-nay Oded ed Gershon Galil Mark Geller and Alan Millard (Leiden Brill 2009) 233ndash35 No prisms or cylinders bearing Assyrian inscriptions are known between the reigns of Ti-glath-pileser I and Sargon II The latterrsquos scribes appear to have reintroduced prisms as a medi-um for writing out long descriptive annals and adopted the cylinder format for shorter textsfrom its southern neighbor Babylonia a cylinder of Marduk-apla-iddina II (Merodach-baladanof the Bible) from Uruk was brought back to Calah where it likely served as a model for Sargonrsquosown inscriptions K 3751 a clay tablet discovered in the South-East Palace at Calah is a goodexample of a clay foundation tablet used during the reign of Shalmaneser Vrsquos father for photo-graphs see Tadmor and Yamada Tiglath-pileser III 117 figures 6ndash7 On prisms see Benjamin Stu-devent-Hickman ldquoPrismardquo in RlA vol 111ndash2 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin de Gruyter 2006)4ndash6

52 Jamie Novotny

ress sieges Shalmaneserrsquos scribes may have done their best to not mention Sa-maria in these first reports If they did they presumably found a way to spin thenarrative in favor of their royal patron A good example of this is Sennacheribrsquossiege of Jerusalem a city whose capture is absent in reports of this kingrsquos an-nals⁶sup3

Later annalistic texts those written in the kingrsquos fourth and fifth regnal yearassuming such inscriptions existed may have recorded the capture of Samariaand the deportation of its inhabitants assuming of course that the city wastaken while Shalmaneser was still king Such compositions may have confirmed(or even contradicted) some of the information provided in 2Kgs 17 and 18 It ishighly unlikely however that Assyrian inscriptions would have admitted that ittook three years to capture the city Statements about the conquest of Samariaand the removal of its population livestock and property would likely havebeen incorporated into the earlier reports of the destruction of Bīt-ḪumriaWhether Shalmaneser had time to commemorate the capture of Samariawould have depended on how long before his death the city was taken andhow long and tumultuous the revolt that brought his reign and life to an end last-ed If it was captured too close to the tenth month of 722 then it is unlikely thatShalmaneser would have had time to record this event in texts written in hisname However if Samaria was taken in 723 or early in 722 then it is possiblethat Shalmaneser proudly boasted about capturing Bīt-Ḫumriarsquos capital

6 Conclusions

So then what can now-lost Assyrian inscriptions tell us about the last days ofIsrael Potentially a great deal This is certainly the case for Tiglath-pileser IIIand possibly the case for Shalmaneser V Texts of these two kings may have pro-vided important information about the years 734ndash732 and 725ndash722 and mayhave supplemented or contradicted the information provided in 2Kgs 15ndash 18However missing inscriptions of Sargon II would probably not improve ourknowledge about the anti-Assyrian activities of the inhabitants of Samaria inthe year 720 as that information is already known from a number of importanttexts Until new sources become available we can only guess at what the eighth-century Assyrian kings might have said about Bīt-Ḫumria its last two kings andits capital

Eg Grayson and Novotny Inscriptions of Sennacherib 1 65ndash66 no 4 lines 52ndash58 and176ndash77 no 22 iii 27bndash49


Eckart Frahm

Samaria Hamath and Assyriarsquos Conquestsin the Levant in the Late 720s BCE

The Testimony of Sargon IIrsquos Inscriptions

1 Introduction

The fall of Samaria in the late 720s BCE and the political and military actionsleading to and immediately following this fateful event with its major historicaland religious consequences are documented by several types of historical sour-ces The available evidence comprises

a) Texts from various backgrounds including the Hebrew Bible Assyrian royal inscriptionsAssyrian and Babylonian chronographic works as well as Assyrian administrative andlegal documents with references to Israelitessup1b) Images on Assyrian sculptures in Rooms V and VIII of Sargon IIrsquos palace in Khorsabadsup2c) Other artifacts most importantly a substantial number of ivories found in the Assyriancity of Calah and in Samaria itselfsup3d) Archaeological traces (albeit all in all modest) of the destruction and later rebuilding

The Assyrian royal inscriptions are discussed in this and in Jamie Novotnyrsquos contribution tothe volume at hand Notes on the chronographic texts are found in the last section of this chap-ter For the Assyrian administrative and legal documents see the articles by Radner and FalesSeveral other contributions to this book provide detailed analyses of the various Biblical textspertaining to the fall of Samaria See Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (Goumlttingen Cuvillier Verlag1994) 276ndash78 364 Christoph Uehlinger ldquolsquohellipund wo sind die Goumltter von Samarienrsquo Die Wegfuumlh-rung syrisch-palaumlstinischer Kultstatuen auf einem Relief Sargons II in ḪorsabadDūr-Šarrukīnrdquoin Und Mose schrieb dieses Lied aufhellip Festschrift fuumlr Oswald Loretz ed Manfried Dietrich andIngo Kottsieper (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 1998) 739ndash76 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoNo AnthropomorphicGraven Image Notes on the Assumed Anthropomorphic Cult Statues in the Temples of YHWH inthe Pre-Exilic Periodrdquo UF 31 (1999) 391ndash415 It is possible that the ivories found in Room SW 37 of Fort Shalmaneser at Calah (Nimrud) mayhave come from Assyriarsquos western campaigns in the 720s when Samaria was conquered Numer-ous ivories perhaps representing the same set were in fact found at Samaria in layers datingto the Late Hellenistic period when they were apparently dumped For discussion and furtherliterature see Claudia Suter ldquoImages Tradition and Meaning The Samaria and Other LevantineIvoriesrdquo in A Common Cultural Heritage Studies on Mesopotamia and the Biblical World in Honorof Barry L Eichler ed Grant Frame et al (Bethesda MD CDL Press 2011) 219ndash41 esp 220ndash21

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-004

that occurred as a consequence of the Assyrian conquests in the urban setting of Samariaand the (former) kingdom of Israel in general⁴

Reviewing this list it seems no exaggeration to claim that few other major eventsin ancient Near Eastern history are documented by larger numbers of writtendocuments and other evidence than the end of the kingdom of Israel is Andyet despite this embarrassment of riches ndash or perhaps rather because of it ndash As-syriologists and Hebrew Bible scholars such as Hayim Tadmor Bob BeckingNadav Narsquoaman Andreas Fuchs Gershon Galil Christine Tetley Ariel Baggand Sarah Melville to list only some of the many scholars who have contributedto the discussion have suggested very different scenarios and chronologies forthe events at issue⁵ Key questions that remain unanswered include whetherthe Assyrians conquered Samaria once or twice and when exactly whichroles were played by the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BCE) and Sar-

For Samaria see Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria Volume I Early Iron AgeThrough the Ninth Century BCE (Atlanta GA Scholars Press 1992) id The Archaeology of Is-raelite Samaria Volume II The Eighth Century BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2002)id ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samaria Toward a Dialogue between Texts and Archaeologyrdquo inUp to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean inHonor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie White Crawford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jerusalem W F Al-bright Institute of Archaeological Research Israel Exploration Society 2007) 258ndash79 seealso the short recent overview by Rupert Chapman ldquoSamaria ndash Capital of Israelrdquo BAR 435(2017) 24ndash30 63 Evidence for destruction by the Assyrian army is virtually non-existent atthe site of Samaria despite claims to the contrary in the very incomplete reports by KathleenKenyon on her 1930s excavations which were heavily based on the Biblical account For addi-tional information see the chapters on the archaeology of Samaria and other Israelite sitesfound elsewhere in this volume Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur A Chronological-Historical StudyrdquoJCS 12 (1958) 22ndash40 77ndash 100 Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and ArchaeologicalStudy (Leiden Brill 1992) Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background of the Conquest of Sa-maria (720 BC)rdquo Bib 71 (1990) 206ndash25 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad457ndash58 Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of SamariardquoCBQ 57 (1995) 52ndash65 M Christine Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Reason for Rejectingthe Hypothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ 64 (2002) 59ndash77 Ariel Bagg Die Assyrer und das West-land Studien zur historischen Geographie und Herrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1 Jt vuZ(Leuven Peeters 2011) 227ndash44 Sarah C Melville The Campaigns of Sargon II King of Assyria721ndash705 BC (Norman University of Oklahoma Press 2016) 65ndash76 Helpful summaries and crit-ical assessments of the scholarly discussion are provided by Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fallof Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 and Kenneth Bergland ldquoAnal-ysis and Assessment of Chronological Explanations of the Fall of Samariardquo Spes Christiana22ndash23 (2011ndash 12) 63ndash84 See now also Mordechai Cogan ldquoRestoring the Empire Sargonrsquos Cam-paign to the West in 72019 BCErdquo IEJ 67 (1967) 151ndash67

56 Eckart Frahm

gon II (721ndash705 BCE) respectively both of whom seem to have been involved inthe events what eventually happened to the last king of Israel Hoshea who wasin charge in Samaria in the aftermath of his deposition and finally whether thethree year siege of Samaria mentioned in the Bible (2Kgs 175ndash6) began in 725724 or perhaps even as late as 721 BCE if it ever took place

Several factors explain why modern scholars have so far failed to reach aconsensus on the issues in question One is that no inscriptions of any impor-tance from the reign of Shalmaneser V have yet been found⁶ Consequentlythe statement in the Babylonian Chronicle (I 27ndash28) that Shalmaneser ldquoravagedSamariardquo at some point during his five year long reign⁷ and similar claims madein the Bible cannot be paired with more elaborate accounts of this event writtenin the name of the king who supposedly brought it about Equally problematicis that several of the texts from Assyria that are available most notably the As-syrian Eponym Chronicle and a number of important inscriptions of Sargon IIoffer poorly preserved accounts of the events surrounding the fall of Samariandash and that Sargonrsquos inscriptions differ markedly in what they have to sayabout them And finally there is the problem that the most important Biblicalaccounts in 2Kgs 17 and 18 provide a number of chronological and historicalconundrums probably due to the fact that they misrepresent at least to somedegree the chronographic records and other traditions on which they were orig-inally based

This article does not aim at offering a reconstruction of the events that willsettle the discussion once and for all something that can probably only be ach-ieved if we are lucky enough one day to discover additional sourcesWhat it pri-marily seeks to provide instead is a presentation and a new assessment of the

For the most recent analysis of the inscribed weights from Shalmaneserrsquos reign the only ex-tant objects with texts written in the name of this king see Frederick Mario Fales ldquoThe AssyrianLion-Weights A Further Attemptrdquo in Libiamo nersquo lieti calici Ancient Near Eastern Studies Pre-sented to Lucio Milano ed Paola Corograve et al (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 2016) 483ndash507 Fales sug-gests very tentatively ldquothat the weight-standard lsquoof the landrsquo which came to be added only inAramaic on the lion-weights from his [scil Shalmaneser Vrsquos] reign enhanced by bronze handlescould have represented a ponderal measure then current in the territories of the Levant or Trans-euphratene such as had been annexed to Assyrian suzerainty by this rulerrdquo (p 497) For a thor-ough reevaluation of the reign of Shalmaneser V see now Keiko Yamada and Shigeo YamadaldquoShalmaneser V and His Era Revisitedrdquo in ldquoNow It Happened in Those Daysrdquo Studies in Bib-lical Assyrian and Other Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Mordechai Coganon His 75th Birthday ed Amitai Baruchi-Unna et al (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2017)387ndash442 (an article that appeared too late to be fully taken into consideration here butwhich comes to similar historical conclusions) A Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley NY Augustin 1975) 73


various accounts of the victory over Samaria that are found in Sargon IIrsquos royalinscriptions ndash some of which have only recently become known It is hoped thatsuch an overview will at the very least help eliminate some of the less likelyhistorical solutions that have been proposed in the past Since the fall of Samariacannot be detached from the events surrounding the wide-ranging rebellion ofYau-birsquodi ndash or Ilu-birsquodi ndash of Hamath⁸ this latter event will feature quite promi-nently as well⁹

In the following I will present the relevant Sargon texts to the extent pos-sible in the sequence in which they were writtensup1⁰ trusting that such an ar-rangement will contribute to a better understanding of some chronological is-sues crucial for a historical analysis of the events under discussion Eventhough several students of Assyrian royal inscriptions most notably Liveranisup1sup1have shown that later campaign accounts that modify earlier ones should byno means be dismissed as historically worthless (despite their tendency to con-

It has long been supposed (even though some doubts remain) that the name Yau-birsquodi con-tains the theophoric element YHWH which could be seen as adding a religious dimension tothe alliance between the Hamathean insurgent and the Samarians see among others Stepha-nie Dalley ldquoYahweh in Hamath in the 8th Century BC Cuneiform Material and Historical Deduc-tionsrdquo VT 50 (1990) 21ndash32 One should keep in mind however that other members of the anti-Assyrian coalition of 720 BCE not the least Damascuswere clearly not particularly committed tothe worship of YHWH and that the rebellion therefore can hardly be seen as a ldquoholy warrdquowaged in the name of the Israelite god Ran Zadok ldquoIsraelites and Judaeans in the Neo-AssyrianDocumentation (732ndash602 BCE) An Overview of the Sources and a Socio-Historical Assess-mentrdquo BASOR 374 (2015) 159ndash89 esp 160 discusses the possibility that both Yau-birsquodi andan earlier Hamathean insurgent with an apparently Yahwistic name Azri-Yau ldquodescendedfrom dynastic marriages between Hamathean rulers and North Israelite princessesrdquo On rebellions against the Assyrian crown in general see Karen Radner ldquoRevolts in the Assyr-ian Empire Succession Wars Rebellions Against a False King and Independence Movementsrdquoin Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World and the Near East In the Crucible of Em-pire ed John J Collins and JG Manning (Leiden Brill 2016) 41ndash54 and Eckart Frahm ldquoRevoltsin the Neo-Assyrian Empire A Preliminary Discourse Analysisrdquo in Revolt and Resistance 76ndash89 For a discussion and convenient overview of the composition dates of Sargonrsquos royal inscrip-tions see Andreas Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711 vChr (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Cor-pus Project 1998) 81ndash96 and id ldquoSargon IIrdquo RlA 12 ed Michael P Streck (Berlin de Gruyter2009) 51ndash61 esp 52 It is important to note that the dates provided by Fuchs are mostly basedon the number of campaigns covered in the inscriptions and not on actual date formulas con-cluding them Given that there are substantial inconsistencies in the way Sargonrsquos scribes pro-vided chronological markers for the kingrsquos military activities some uncertainty remains Mario Liverani ldquoCritique of Variants and the Titulary of Sennacheribrdquo in Assyrian Royal In-scriptions New Horizons in Literary Ideological and Historical Analysis ed Frederick MarioFales (Rome Istituto per lrsquoOriente 1981) 225ndash57

58 Eckart Frahm

flate earlier and later historical events) the old rule established by Olmsteadsup1sup2that the very first reports an Assyrian king provides about a given military cam-paign tend to be the most reliable remains to some extent valid

2 The Samaria and Hamath Episodes in SargonIIrsquos Inscriptions

One of the earliest Sargon texts mentioning Samaria is the so-called ldquoAshurCharterrdquo which is actually a votive inscription for Assur copied from a silver ves-sel dedicated to the god (see ll 40ndash43) onto a clay tablet The ldquohistoricalrdquo part ofthe text which follows a panegyric introduction praising first the god Assur andthen King Sargon is devoted exclusively to events of Sargonrsquos second regnalyear that is 720 BCE

Text 1 Ashur Charter (covers events up to 720 BCE)sup1sup3

16) i-na 2-e BALA-ia šaacute ina gišGUZA LUGAL-ti uacute-ši-bu-ma a-ge-e be-lu-ti an-na-[ap-ru-ma]17) ILLAT mdḫum-ba-i-ga-aacuteš MAN KUR e-lam-ti uacute-par-ri-ra aacuteš-ku-na BAD5BAD5-šuacute ⸢md⸣[ia-uacute-

bi-irsquo-di]18) ⸢luacute⸣ḫa-ma-ta-a-a la EN gišGUZA la ši-nin-ti EacuteGAL šaacute ina SIPA-ut UNMEŠ ši-mat-s[u lā

šīmat (0)]19) a-na ANŠAacuteR KUR-šuacute UNMEŠ-šuacute ḪUL-tu la DUgraveGGA-tuacute uacute-ba-rsquou-uacute-ma il-qa-a ši-ṭ[u-(uacute‐)tu

(ṣimirra dimašqu ())]20) ⸢uru⸣ar-pa-da urusa-me-ri-na uacute-paḫ-ḫir-ma a-na i-di-šuacute uacute-ter-r[a mārē aššur ša ina māt

ḫamati () (hellip)]21) [ba]-⸢šu-uacute GIM DIŠ-en id-duk-ma⸣ na-piš-tuacute ul e-z[ib x x x x x x x x]22) [x x] x x x ⸢qa-ti aacuteš⸣-ši-ma aacuteš-šuacute ka-šad KUR ḫa-ma-t[i sakāp Yau-birsquodi () x x x]23) [ša māt a]-⸢mur-re⸣-e DAGAL-ti am-ḫur-ma ANŠAacuteR DINGI[R x x x x x x x x x]24) [ikribīya () i]š-me-ma il-qa-a su-pe-ia u[m-ma-na-at() aššur gapšāti() adkema()]25) [ḫarrān māt a-m]ur-re-e uacute-šaacute-aṣ-bit KUR ḫa-[ma-ta x x x x x x x x x x]26) [x x] x mu-ṣa-at šaacute-lam-du ta-nit-t[i x x x x x x x x x x x]27) [nīšēgimir() māt a-m]ur-re-e a-na GIgraveR2-ia uacute-šak-ni-[iš Yau-birsquodi šacircšu adi kimtišu

(mundaḫṣēšu) ()]28) ⸢a-na⸣ URU-ia urua-šur ub-la-ma helliphellip

Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead Assyrian Historiography A Source Study (Columbia MO Universityof Missouri 1916) Edition Henry W F Saggs ldquoHistorical Texts and Fragments of Sargon II of Assyria 1 ThelsquoAššur Charterrsquordquo Iraq 37 (1975) 11ndash20 Collated by the author from a photo posted on the websiteof the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) see httpscdliuclaedu (accessed 102017)


Notes to the text Line 18 restored after Text 11 (ldquoMosul Annalsrdquo) l 5 lines 20ndash22 after Text11 ll 14ndash15 18 and Text 3 (Tell Tayinat Stele) ll 5rsquondash7rsquo line 24 after Text 12 (KhorsabadDisplay Inscription) l 34 line 27 after Text 2 (Asharneh Stele) B 11 and other textsNote the new interpretation of line 26 mu-ṣa-at is apparently a feminine singular stativederived from wuṣṣucircmuṣṣucirc ldquoto spread outrdquo even though one would rather have expectedplural forms here

ldquoIn my second regnal year (palucirc) when I had settled on my royal throne and had beencrowned with the lordly crown I dispersed the forces of Ḫumba(n)igaš King of Elamand defeated himYau-birsquodi of Hamath (who was) not the (rightful) throne-holder (who was) unfit for (livingin) a palace and as whose fate [it had never been decreed] that he would (ever) shepherdthe people [(hellip)] (who) intended (to do) evil things that were not good against the godAssur his land and his people and treated (them) with insolence he gathered [ṢimirraDamascus] Arpad and Samaria and brought them to his side He killed [the citizens ofAssyria who] were [in Hamath (hellip)] all together and left no one alive[hellip] hellip I lifted my hand and prayed for the conquest of the land of Hamath [the overthrow ofYau-birsquodi and the hellip] of the vast land of Amurru Assur the god [hellip] listened [to my prayers]and received my supplication[I mobilized the vast] troops [of Assur] and had (them) take [the way to] the land of AmurruThe land of Hamath [hellip] hellip spread out was the corpse the praise [hellip] I made [the people allof] the land of Amurru bow to my feet [Yau-birsquodi (or Him) together with his family (and hisfighters)] I brought to my city Ashur (followed by an account of Sargonrsquos favorable treat-ment of the city of Ashur)rdquo

The Ashur Charter reveals a number of important details1) Sargon seems not to have campaigned at all during the last months of 722

BCE after he had become Assyrian kingsup1⁴ and during his entire first regnal year721 BCE Otherwise he would certainly have mentioned in the Ashur Chartermilitary accomplishments associated with these two years This makes it very un-likely that the Assyrian army began a siege of Samaria in 721 BCE as claimed byTetleysup1⁵ The Ashur Charter also helps establish why Sargon stayed at home dur-ing the period in question The text portrays Sargonrsquos predecessor Shalmanes-er V as a corrupt ruler who interfered with and harmed the cult of Assur Thisnegative appreciation strongly suggests that Sargon had come to the throne in

According to the Babylonian Chronicle Sargon ascended the Assyrian throne on the tenthday of Ṭebet (X) 722 BCE a few days after the death of his predecessor earlier that month Gray-son Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles 73 29ndash31 Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fallrdquo 59ndash77 Tetleyrsquos arguments suffer from the fact that sheignores much of the relevant Assyriological scholarship especially the important work on Sar-gon by Fuchs thus illustrating the perils of a ldquoGermanica non legunturrdquo approach The latteralso applies to the study by Sung Jin Park ldquoA New Historical Reconstruction of the Fall of Sa-mariardquo Bib 93 (2012) 98ndash106

60 Eckart Frahm

somewhat irregular fashion and had to deal with domestic opposition duringthe first months of his reign Other Sargon texts to be discussed later (seeTexts 13ndash 15 below) corroborate this assumptionsup1⁶

2) During the time of domestic unrest in Assyria Yau-birsquodi of Hamath hadstarted a revolt against the Assyrians that was soon joined by numerous impor-tant polities of the Westland including Arpad in northern Syria ndash and SamariaOther texts also mention Damascus and Ṣimirra plus it seems (in Text 11) somecities whose names are lost

3) While the Ashur Charter is short on detail it clearly states that the militaryactions initiated by Sargon in 720 BCE led to the defeat of the Western coalition(see line 27) Even though it is not explicitly pointed out it would seem that Sa-maria gave up its opposition as well but there is no unequivocal statement inthe text that this required a military attack on the city Moreover no ruler of Sa-maria is mentioned something that applies however also to the other states ofthe enemy coalitionsup1⁷

4) Yau-birsquodi together with his family (and some of his fighters) was broughtto Ashur where he was apparently flayed This last detail is known not from theAshur Charter but from later Sargon inscriptions (see below Texts 6 and 12) andan epigraph accompanying an image of a tortured enemy in Room VIII of Sar-gonrsquos palace in Khorsabadsup1⁸

Did Sargon participate in person in the Western campaign of 720 BCE or wasthe campaign conducted by his generals The Ashur Charter is not quite clear inthis regardsup1⁹ but another inscription on an Assyrian stele erected at Tell Ashar-neh on the Orontes River shortly after the events provides an answer to thisquestion

The counter-arguments raised by Galo W Vera Chamaza ldquoSargon IIrsquos Ascent to the ThroneThe Political Situationrdquo SAAB 6 (1992) 21ndash33 do not strike me as particularly convincing The one exception is Hamath but it is noteworthy that Yau-birsquodi is not presented as theldquokingrdquo of this polity Instead he appears ndash as in most other Sargon texts (for exceptions seebelow note 53) ndash as ldquoa man from Hamathrdquo (⸢luacute⸣ḫa-ma-ta-a-a) It may well be that Yau-birsquodibuilt his career in opposition to a Hamathean ruler with pro-Assyrian tendencies For the text see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 278 364 for a reproductionof an early drawing of the image see Pauline Albenda The Palace of Sargon King of Assyria(Paris Eacuteditions Recherche sur les civilisations 1986) pl 78 The Š-stem in l 25 points towards the latter scenario but the 1st person singular form in line28 suggests the former


Text 2 Tell Asharneh Stele (covers events up to 720 BCE)sup2⁰

Side B1rsquo) [hellip] x x x [hellip]2rsquo) [hellip] a-na AME[Š x (x)]3rsquo) [hellip]-šuacute uacute-qiacute-ru-m[a]4rsquo) [hellip] ⸢i⸣-te-e URU-šu5rsquo) [hellip a-n]a šit-mur ANŠEKURRAM[EŠ]6rsquo) [hellip]-ti LUacute x(e) qa ma

7rsquo) [hellip di-ik-ta()-š]uacute-nu ma-at-t[u]8rsquo) [hellip is]-⸢ki⸣-ru IacuteD9rsquo) [hellip di-tal-l]i-iš iq-mu-uacute-m[a]10rsquo) [x x (x) ina māt] a-ma-at-te iš-ku-nu-m[a]11rsquo) [hellip] x šaacute-a-šuacute ga-du kim-ti-[šuacute]12rsquo) [a-na qeacute-re]b URU-ia aš-šurki ⸢ub-lu⸣-[ni]

Side C1rsquo) [hellip] x [hellip]2rsquo) [hellip]-ni-ia [hellip]3rsquo) [šaacute ina tukul]-ti daš-šur E[N-ia hellip]4rsquo) [at-ta]-la-ku ugrave mim-mu-uacute [(ša) ina māt (ḫ)am(m)at(t)e amurrecirc ()]5rsquo) [e-tep]-pu-šuacute aacuteš-ṭu-ra ṣ[e-ru-uš-šuacute-(un)]6rsquo) [ištēn i]na KUR ḫa-am-ma-te 1-en ina [hellip]7rsquo) [ištēn] ⸢i⸣-na uruḫa-ta-r[i-ka (hellip)]8rsquo) [ištēn i]na uruKUR-ʾa-a 1-en ina [hellip]9rsquo) [ušziz()] a-lik ar-ki ru ri x [hellip]

Side B ldquo[hellip] hellip for water [hellip] itshis [hellip] they made scarce and [hellip] alongside his city [hellip] forhorses to show their mettle [hellip] hellip [hellip] a major [military defeat] of them [(hellip) and] blocked upthe river [with their corpses hellip] they burned [hellip] turning them into [ashes] They established[devastation] in the land of Hamath and [hellip] hellip They brought him (Yau-birsquodi) together with[his] family [to] my city Ashur (lines 13rsquoff mention offerings for the god Assur)rdquoSide C ldquo[hellip] hellip [hellip] myhellip [hellip What I had] carried out with faith in Assur my lord [hellip] andeverything [I] had done [in the land of Hamath Amurru] I inscribed upon [itthem One(stele) I had erected] in the land of Hamath one in [hellip one] in the city of Ḫatarikka [hellipone] in the city of KURʾa (and) one in [hellip] hellip the one who goes after hellip [hellip] (lines 10rsquoff includeblessings and curses)rdquo

While it is regrettable that this interesting text is so poorly preserved enough isextant to determine as others have beforesup2sup1 that Sargon did apparently not leadthe campaign in 720 BCE against the Westland himself In all likelihood he par-ticipated instead in the summer of that year in the fruitless fight in the east

Edition Grant Frame ldquoThe Tell Acharneh Stela of Sargon II of Assyriardquo in Tell Acharneh1998ndash2004 ed Michel Fortin (Turnhout Brepols 2006) 49ndash68 esp 49ndash52 See eg Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 421

62 Eckart Frahm

against the Elamites at Der briefly described in the Ashur Charter and severallater inscriptions and also mentioned and ascribed to Sargonrsquos second yearin the Babylonian Chronicle The 3rd person plural forms on Side B of the TellAsharneh stele make it quite clear that the Western campaign was conductedby Assyrian generalssup2sup2

We learn moreover that the battle fought between the Assyrian troops andthose of Yau-birsquodi involved fighting in and around a city with a nearby riverclearly Qarqar on the Orontessup2sup3 and major bloodshed and destruction Samariais not mentioned in the preserved part of the text but it is feasible that the citywas among the places where Sargon according to the text on Side C erected var-ious victory stelae

Another city where this apparently happened was Kullania modern TellTayinat on the northern bend of the Orontes River Fragments of a Sargonstele found there were recently published by Lauinger and Batiuk Whetherthe text was written in the immediate aftermath of the quelling of the Yau-birsquodi revolt is not certain but likely The portion on Samaria reads as follows

Text 3 Tell Tayinat Stele (covers events up to 720 BCE())sup2⁴

1rsquo) [hellip] x [hellip]2rsquo) [hellip i-n]a uruqar-qa-ri ⸢uacute⸣-[paḫ-ḫir-ma (hellip)]3rsquo) [(hellip) ušbalkit() it]-ti-ia urua[r-pad-da ṣimirra (hellip)]4rsquo) [(hellip) dimašqu (hellip) urus]a-mi-ri-i-n[a hellip]5rsquo) [mārē aššur ša () ina qeacute-r]eb KUR a-ma-te Eacutekit x [hellip bašucirc kī ištēn ()]6rsquo) [iddūk qātī () aš-ši-m]a daš-šur MAN DINGIRME[Š (hellip) aššu (hellip)]7rsquo) [(hellip) kašād māt a-ma]-te sa(text IR)-kap Idi[a-uacute-bi-irsquo-di hellip]8rsquo) [(hellip) māt amurrecirc amḫur () uacute]-ma-ʾe-er-ma [hellip]

Melville The Campaigns of Sargon II 61 237 n 23 has suggested a slightly different scenar-io In her view Sargon first participated in the battle of Der and then travelled to the West wherehe took part in the later stages of the campaign of 720 BCE One of Melvillersquos arguments is that arelief in Room V of Sargonrsquos palace in Khorsabad depicts the king in his chariot at Ekron Mel-ville cannot be proven wrong but some doubts remain not least because the dating of the As-syrian intervention at Ekron to 720 BCE is not completely certain One can also ask if the reliefreally provides an accurate representation of what had actually happened Qarqar is usually identified with modern Qarqūr which may well be correct but one cannotentirely exclude the possibility that the city was actually located at Tell Asharneh as argued byNadav Narsquoaman ldquoQarqar = Tell cAsharnehrdquo NABU 1999 no 89 For a discussion see Ariel BaggDie Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 1 Die Levante (Wiesbaden Reichert2007) 194ndash95 Edition Jacob Lauinger and Stephen Batiuk ldquoA Stele of Sargon II at Tell Tayinatrdquo ZA 105(2015) 54ndash68 The fragment of interest to us is A 27863


9rsquo) [hellip] ⸢a-duk⸣ x [hellip]10rsquo) [hellip] x [hellip]

Notes to the text For the tentative new restorations in lines 2rsquo ndash3rsquo and the passage in gen-eral see Text 11 (ldquoMosul Annalsrdquo) ll 6ndash 11 For lines 6rsquondash8rsquo see Text 1 (Ashur Charter)ll 22ndash24 for line 9rsquo see perhaps Text 12 (Khorsabad Display Inscription) l 35 EN ḫi-iṭ-ṭia-duk-ma The size of the gaps at the beginnings and ends of the lines is uncertain

ldquoHe (Yau-birsquodi) gathered [hellip troops hellip] in the city of Qarqar [and prompted hellip (perhaps thevast land of Amurru) to rebel] against me Arpad [Ṣimirra (hellip) Damascus (hellip)] and Sama-ria [hellip (perhaps he brought to his side) hellip He killed the citizens of Assyria all together whowere in] the midst of the land of Hamath hellip [hellip][I lifted my hand(s) and implored] the god Assur [(to help me) conquer the land of] Hamathoverthrow Yau-birsquodi [and hellip the land of Amurru] I ordered [hellip (perhaps my hellip troops hellip)] Ikilled [those who had committed crimes])rdquosup2⁵

The three texts discussed so far were in all likelihood written towards the end orshortly after the Western campaign of 720 BCE Some four years later Sargoncommissioned two additional texts that mention Yau-birsquodirsquos revolt and its conse-quences One is the Najafehabad Stele erected in 716 BCE by Assyrian troops inthe eastern Zagros region Mostly devoted to the 716 Assyrian campaign to theEast this text also provides some limited information on earlier military ven-tures including the Western campaign of 720 The account is very damagedbut seems similar to the versions in three Sargon texts to be discussed later(Texts 10ndash 12) I am grateful to Andreas Fuchs and Grant Frame for providingme with their joint new ndash but still unpublished ndash transliteration of the passagebased on a study of a squeeze of the inscription and to Fuchs for sending me histranslationsup2⁶ Much remains unfortunately unclear

Text 4 Najafehabad Stele (covers events up to 716 BCE)sup2⁷

Reverse4) (x x) x x [m]⸢ia⸣-uacute-bi-irsquo-di ⸢luacute⸣kur⸢ḫa⸣-am-ma-ta-a-⸢a⸣ x x x x (x) [hellip]sup2⁸5) [(x)] (x x) x x x x x x x x x x x x ma x uacute kid x x x x (x) [hellip]

The traces in line 9rsquo are difficult to read A few of the new readings offered in the following have been established by myself basedon the photos of the text published by Louis D Levine Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae from Iran (Tor-onto Royal Ontario Museum 1972) pl VIII and IX Most of them are however owed to Fuchsand Framewho will publish their collaborative work on the Najafehabad Stele in the near futurein volume 2 of the series The Royal Inscription of the Neo-Assyrian Period Edition Levine Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae from Iran 25ndash50

64 Eckart Frahm

6) (x) x a x (x) x x ti x (x) nu luacute⸢EacuteRIN⸣MEŠ ⸢uacute⸣-pa-⸢ḫir⸣-ma ma-mit ⸢DINGIRMEŠ GALMEŠ⸣(x) [hellip]

7) (x) x di x ⸢uacute-ter⸣-ma ⸢a-na⸣ e-mu-qi-šuacute it-ta-⸢kil⸣ um-ma-na-at AN⸢ŠAacuteR⸣ gap-š[aacute-a-ti ad-kema hellip]

8) x (x) ⸢i di⸣ gi-ip-⸢šu⸣ x (x) it-ba-a giš⸢GIGIR⸣ pit-ḫal-lu ANŠE⸢KURMEŠ⸣ ina uruab x [hellip]9) [(x)] ⸢ma⸣ bu x (x) ri aacuteš ⸢di⸣ x x (x) x-šuacute-nu IacuteD na-ba-lu ⸢na⸣-ba-si-iš ⸢aṣ-ru⸣-up a x x

[hellip]10) (x) ⸢id eacutedan uru dušuacute⸣ x (x) [u]na ⸢tuli⸣ (x) x x ⸢kan⸣ ina giša-ši-bi ⸢dan⸣-ni ⸢BAgraveD-

šuacute kar⸣-pa-ti-⸢iš uacute⸣-pa-⸢ri⸣-[ir-ma hellip uruqarqaru()]11) [(ina)] ⸢dNE⸣GI aq-mu šaacute-a-⸢šuacute a⸣-di ⸢kim-ti⸣-šuacute luacutemun-daḫ-ṣi-šuacute a-⸢na⸣ UR[U]-⸢ia aš⸣-

šurki ub-la ina IGI ⸢KAacute⸣GAL [hellip mašakšu akūṣ () (hellip)]12) (x) x x x ⸢šu⸣-utndashluacute⸢SAGMEŠ⸣-ia a-na luacuteENndashNAM-⸢uacute⸣-ti UGU-šuacute-nu aacuteš-kun KUR ḫa-am-

ma-⸢ta⸣ (‐)[a-a hellip]13) (x x) x ⸢id kuki⸣ x (x) helliphellip

Notes to the text At the end of line 8 it would have been tempting to read uruqar-qa-[ri hellip]sup2⁹but the sign after URU really seems to be AB and not QAR Perhaps one should read uruab-tam-[ma-ku hellip] and assume that the city in question is to be identified with Aštammaku aldquoroyal cityrdquo of Hamath during the reign of Shalmaneser III whose name is once writtenuruab-ta-ma-kusup3⁰ There remains much uncertainty however Line 11 is restored after Text12 (Khorsabad Display Inscription) l 35 (it cannot be excluded that a-ku-uṣ belongs atthe beginning of line 12)

ldquo(In my second regnal year (palucirc)) helliphellip Yau-birsquodi of Hamath hellip [hellip] helliphellip [hellip] hellip he gathered histroops and [transgressed] the oath (sworn) by the great gods [hellip] he brought to his side andtrusted in his own force[I mobilized] the vast troops of Assur [hellip] hellip massed body hellip he rose chariots cavalry andhorses in the city of Abhellip [hellip] helliphellip their hellip (with their blood) I dyed the river and the dry landred like red wool hellip [hellip] helliphellip with a mighty battering ram I smashed its wall like clay pots[hellip] I destroyed [the city of Qarqar] by fire I brought him (Yau-birsquodi) together with his familyand his fighters to my city Ashur and in front of the [hellip] Gate [I flayed him hellip]hellip I appointed (one of ()) my eunuchs over them to serve as provincial governor The landof Hamath (or the citizens of Hamath) [hellip] hellip (followed by an account of Sargonrsquos ldquothirdpalucircrdquo)rdquo

Unlike the Tell Asharneh Stele the Najafehabad Stele ascribes all agency for theWestern campaign of 720 BCE to Sargon alone It claims moreover that in thewake of the campaign an Assyrian eunuch was appointed as provincial gover-

The poorly preserved lines preceding line 4 could have accommodated an account of the bat-tle of Der but certainly not one of the conquest of Samaria see Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711vChr 85 See the references to Qarqar in Texts 3 10 11 and 12 A Kirk Grayson Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858ndash754 BC) (TorontoToronto University Press 1996) A010216 75rsquo For further references and possible locations seeBagg Die Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 1 33ndash34


nor over Hamath Since this measure is not yet mentioned in the Ashur Charterand the Asharneh Stele (Texts 1 and 2)sup3sup1 it seems likely that it was not imple-mented in 720 BCE but shortly thereafter ndash when exactly remains unclear

While later inscriptions (see below Texts 7() 8 and 9) claim that Sargonalso appointed one of his eunuchs as governor of Samaria it is noteworthythat the Najafehabad Stele does apparently not yet include such a statementsup3sup2Considering the emphasis the account in the Stele puts on the events in Hamaththis omission does however not necessarily mean that such an appointmenthad not been made in the meantime

A rather startling new claim is made in a second Sargon inscription com-posed around 716 BCE the so-called Juniper Palace Inscription from Kalḫu incentral Assyria After an introductory passage with royal titles and epithetsthe text characterizes the king as follows

Text 5 Juniper Palace Text (covers events up to 716 BCE)sup3sup3

7) NUN na-arsquo-du šaacute ina re-bit BAgraveDANki it-ti mdḫum-ba-ni-ga-aacuteš LUGAL KUR e-lam-ti in-nam-ru-ma iš-ku-nu taḫ-ta-šuacute

8) mu-šak-niš KUR ia-uacute-du šaacute a-šar-šuacute ru-uacute-qu na-si-iḫ KUR ḫa-am-ma-te šaacute mdia-uacute-bi-irsquo-dima-lik-šuacute-nu ik-šu-du ŠUII-šuacute

ldquoExalted prince who met (in battle) with Humbanigaš king of Elam in the district of Derand defeated him subduer of the land of Judah which lies far away who deported (thepeople of) Hamath who captured Yau-birsquodi their king with his handsrdquo

The Juniper Palace Inscription has some chronological inconsistencies but thebetter known episodes to which it alludes in the aforementioned passage all oc-curred in 720 BCE Therefore and because the text covers only events up to 716

The Tell Tayinat Stele (Text 3) is so damaged that one cannot establish whether it dealt withthe Assyrian efforts to reorganize the political landscape of the Westland At first glance the strange plural writing luacute⸢SAGMEŠ⸣-ia and the possessive suffix -šunu inelišunu both in line 12 could be taken as indicating that Sargon appointed governors in otherWestern polities as well (thus Andreas Fuchs ldquoDie Assyrer und das Westlandrdquo Or 83 (2014)243ndash57 esp 250) but the sign sequence ⸢SAGMEŠ⸣ apart from not being absolutely certainis perhaps rather a late echo of the dual-based Middle Assyrian term for eunuch šandashrēšēnwhile elišunu apparently referring to the people is also found in texts that clearly deal onlywith Hamath (see below Texts 13ndash15) Copy Hugo Winckler Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons nach den Papierabklatschen und Originalenneu herausgegeben (Leipzig Hinrichrsquosche Buchhandlung 1889) vol 2 pl 48 For a discussion ofthe text and a partial new edition see Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Portion of Sargonrsquos Nim-rud Inscriptionrdquo SAAB 8 (1994) 17ndash20

66 Eckart Frahm

BCE which is long before Sargonrsquos next recorded major campaign to the Levantin 711 BCEsup3⁴ it is generally assumed that the reference to Sargon being ldquothe sub-duer of Judahrdquo refers to the campaign of 720 BCE as well In the Khorsabad An-nals to be discussed later (Text 710) Sargon claims that the fight against theenemy coalition led by Yau-birsquodi was immediately followed by an Assyrian attackon Gaza in southern Palestine and it is possible that the altercation with Judahhappened as the Assyrian troops moved southwards in this direction or backfrom theresup3⁵ Despite the strong language used by Sargon in the Juniper PalaceInscription it is evident that Judah did not lose its independence in the courseof these events but the Assyrian actions clearly left an impression on the Ju-deansWhen in 711 BCE Yamani of Ashdod sought to implicate Judah in anotherrebellion the Judean king did not oblige him adopting instead a pro-Assyrianstancesup3⁶

Based on the reference to Judah in the Juniper Palace Inscription both An-dreas Fuchs and I tentatively suggested years ago that the fragmentary ldquoAzekahinscriptionrdquosup3⁷ which describes an Assyrian attack on the Judean city of Azekah ndashand fighting elsewhere in the region ndash at some point during the reign of King He-

Note however that column ii of the Assur fragment VA 8424 (see Fuchs Die Annalen desJahres 711 vChr 28ndash29 57) refers to the deportation of members of an unknown people tosouthern Palestine in Sargonrsquos ldquofifth palucircrdquo ndash a chronological marker probably referring inthis text to 716 BCE Bas reliefs in Room V of Sargonrsquos palace in Khorsabad show the Philistine cities of Amqar-runa (Biblical Ekron) and Gabbutunu (Biblical Gibbethon) plus several additional cities amongthem Barsquoil-gazara and Sinu (see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 277 364) thelatter of which is to be identified with Tell Siyānu 50 km north of Arwad Amqarruna and Gab-butunu might likewise have been attacked in the course of the Assyrian armyrsquos move to southernPalestine in 720 BCE (thus among others John Malcolm Russell The Writing on the Wall Studiesin the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns1999) 114ndash23) but it cannot be excluded that they were targeted some other time perhaps aslate as in 711 BCE It has been suggested that one of the cities depicted in Room V for which noepigraph is extant is Samaria (thus Norma Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukin andSargon IIrsquos Western Campaignsrdquo TA 21 (1994) 255ndash75) but Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 476correctly points to the uncertainty of this proposal For additional discussion see the referenceslisted above in note 2 See Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711 vChr 44ndash46 73ndash74 id ldquoDie Assyrer und das West-landrdquo 248ndash49 The most recent edition with ample bibliography is by A Kirk Grayson and Jamie NovotnyThe Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681 BC) Part 2 (Winona Lake IN Ei-senbrauns 2014) 350ndash52 no 1015 For the editio princeps of the rejoined fragments see NadavNarsquoaman ldquoSennacheribrsquos lsquoLetter to Godrsquo on His Campaign to Judahrdquo BASOR 214 (1974) 25ndash39


zekiah might describe events that happened in 720 BCEsup3⁸ This idea did howev-er not find widespread support A few years ago Nadav Narsquoaman providedstrong albeit perhaps not entirely conclusive arguments against it reaffirminghis earlier contention that the Azekah inscription deals with the famous attackon Judah conducted by Sennacherib in 701 BCEsup3⁹

If Narsquoaman is right there would be no other references to the subjugation ofJudah in Sargonrsquos inscriptions which would make the one in the Juniper PalaceInscription even more puzzling One way to deal with the problem would be toassume that the scribe who composed the text somehow confused the Kingdomof Israel with the Kingdom of Judah but there is no parallel for such an errorand the characterization of Judah as ldquoa far-away landrdquo seems at odds with theidea

It is worth noting on the other hand that the next Sargon inscription avail-able to us the kingrsquos Cylinder Inscription from Khorsabad which covers eventsup to 713 BCE in a non-chronological sequence briefly refers to a defeat over Is-rael while completely ignoring Judah as if the former had replaced the latterAfter alluding with a phrase identical to the one used in the Juniper Palace In-scription to the battle of Der and to skirmishes against Aramaean tribes in theAssyro-Babylonian border region (which we know also took place in 720 BCE)the text characterizes the Assyrian king as follows

Text 6 Khorsabad Cylinder (covers events up to 713 BCE)⁴⁰

19) mu-ri-ib KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a rap-ši ša i-na urura-pi-ḫi BAD5BAD5-uacute KUR mu-uṣ-ri GAR-nu-ma Iḫa-a-nu-nu LUGAL uruḫa-zi-te ka-mu-us-su uacute-še-ri-ba uruaš-šur

Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 314ndash15 Eckart Frahm Einleitung in die San-herib-Inschriften (Vienna Institut fuumlr Orientalistik 1997) 229ndash32 One of my main arguments forascribing the text to the reign of Sargon was that its language and style are highly reminiscent ofSargonrsquos ldquoLetter to the god Assurrdquo Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoSargon IIrsquos Second Palucirc according to the Khorsabad Annalsrdquo TA 34(2007) 165ndash70 Narsquoaman argues quite convincingly that in Sargonrsquos Khorsabad Annals only13 lines and not 26 are missing from the account of the western campaign conducted in thekingrsquos second palucirc This seems not enough to accommodate the lengthy report about an attackagainst Judah that Fuchs and Frahm had suggested might once have been included at this pointndash even though a short reference to such an attack would still fit into the gap Narsquoaman also pro-vides some other important arguments for dating the Azekah episode to 701 BCE Attempts todate it to 712711 BCE or the years after 689 BCE seem altogether unconvincing Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 29ndash44 289ndash96 For a similartext see Cyril J Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954) 173ndash201esp 198ndash201 ll 17 22

68 Eckart Frahm

20) ka-šid luacuteta-mu-di luacutei-ba-di-di luacutemar-si-i-ma-ni luacuteḫa-ia-pa-a šaacute si-it-ta-šuacute-nu in-neacute-et-qa-am-ma uacute-šar-mu-uacute qeacute-reb KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a

ldquo(Sargon) the one who made the vast land of Bīt-Ḫumria (ldquoHouse of Omrirdquo ie Israel)tremble who inflicted a defeat on Egypt in the city of Rapiḫu who had Ḫanunu theking of Gaza enter Assur in fetters who conquered the Tamudi Ibadidi Marsimani andḪayapacirc and had the rest of them (once) they had been resettled dwell in the land ofBīt-Ḫumriardquo

This is the first time in an extant Sargon inscription that some kind of punish-ment of Israel is mentioned even though it remains unclear what Sargon exactlymeans when he claims to have made Israel ldquotremblerdquo It is noteworthy that theremarks on Bīt-Ḫumria are separated in the Cylinder Inscription by several linesfrom those on the violent suppression of the revolt of Yau-birsquodi (now for the firsttime called Ilu-birsquodi) which is found later in the text

25) hellip na-si-iḫ šur-uš KUR a-ma-at-te ša ma-šak mdi-lu-bi-irsquo-di ḫa-am-ma-rsquoi-i iṣ-ru-pu na-ba-si-iš

ldquo(Sargon) hellip the one who tore out the root of the land of Hamath who dyed the skin of Ilu-birsquodi the rebel ruler (ḫammārsquou possibly wordplay with ḫamatāyu ldquoHamatheanrdquo) red likenabāsu-woolrdquo⁴sup1

The sudden emphasis on the defeat of Bīt-Ḫumria (ldquoHouse of Omrirdquo) in the Cyl-inder Inscription is surprising if one takes into account that the earlier Sargontexts have nothing to say about it One wonders which specific event is actuallyalluded to here An episode in 720 BCE not recorded in Sargonrsquos earliest inscrip-tions Such a scenario is to some extent suggested by the fact that the CylinderInscription juxtaposes the Bīt-Ḫumria episode with the Assyrian victory over Ḫa-nunu of Gaza dated in Sargonrsquos Khorsabad Annals (Text 710) to the kingrsquos sec-ond regnal year Since the campaign against Gaza is not mentioned in Sargonrsquos

The exact meaning of this phrase is somewhat unclear At first glance the point seems to bethat Ilu-birsquodirsquos skin became ldquobloody redrdquo in the process of the flaying to which his body was sub-jected But Erica Reiner has pointed to a statement by Lactantius according to which the skin ofthe Roman emperor Valerian after he had been flayed ldquowas dyed with vermilion (infecta rubrocolore) and placed in the temple of the god of the Barbariansrdquo as a reminder of the triumphalvictory the Sasanians had achieved over him and his Roman troops Something similar she sug-gests might have been done with Ilu-birsquodirsquos skin Erica Reiner ldquoThe Reddling of ValerianrdquoClQ 56 (2006) 325ndash29 see also Shiyanthi Thavapalan The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopo-tamia (PhD Dissertation Yale University 2017) 69 Drawing on Reiner David Woods ldquoLactan-tiusValerian and Halophilic BacteriardquoMnemosyne 61 (2008) 479ndash81 suggested that Valerianrsquosskin became red because the Sasanians treated it with salt containing halophilic bacteria whenthey tried to preserve it


earliest inscriptions one wonders however whether it might not in fact haveoccurred some time after 720 BCE and the same could apply to the assault onBīt-Ḫumria The deportation to Israel of the various Arab tribes mentioned inline 20 of the Cylinder Inscription clearly happened long after 720 BCE ndash in Sar-gonrsquos Khorsabad Annals (Text 710 ll 120ndash 123) it is dated to the kingrsquos seventhpalucirc that is 715 BCE⁴sup2

There is yet another possibility however the remark about Bīt-Ḫumria couldrefer to an incident that happened before 720 BCE This last scenario is chieflysuggested by Sargonrsquos aforementioned Annals from Khorsabad a long chrono-logically organized inscription from late in the kingrsquos reign which covers eventsup to 707 BCE (an earlier annalistic text Sargonrsquos Annals from 711 BCE is un-fortunately poorly preserved with the accounts of his first regnal years miss-ing)⁴sup3 The Khorsabad Annals describe an attack on Samaria that is datedquite unexpectedly to the kingrsquos accession year Regrettably the passage is poor-ly preserved

Text 7 Khorsabad Annals (covers events up to 707 BCE)⁴⁴ Samaria

10) helliphellip i-na S[AG šarrūtiya ša ina kussecirc šarrūti ušibuma ()]11) [agecirc bēlūti annapruma () (hellip) luacute(-uru)sa-me-r]i-na-a-a [ša itti šarri nakiriya (or ālik

pāniya) ana lā epēš ardūti ()]12) [u lā našecirc bilti idbubū igmelūma (or ikmelūma) ēpušū tāḫāzu () ina emūq DN(N) helliphellip]13) [ helliphellip ]14) [helliphellip mu-š]ak-ši-i[d] er-net-ti-ia i[t-ti-šu-nu amdaḫiṣma () helliphellip]15) [27 lim 2 me 8090 nīšē āšib libbišu (adi narkabātišunu u ilāni tiklīšun) aacute]š-lu-la

50 gišGIGIRMEŠ ki-ṣir šar-ru-ti-ia i-na [libbišunu akṣurma sittātišunu ()]16) [ina qereb māt aššur ušaṣbit () samerina uacute-t]er-ma UGU šaacute pa-na uacute-še-šib(or me)

UNMEŠ KURKURMEŠ ki-šit-[ti qātēya ina libbi ušērib šūt-rēšiya]

On the date(s) of Sargonrsquos (and possible later) deportations to Samaria see Nadav Narsquoamanand Ran Zadok ldquoAssyrian Deportations to the Province of Samerina in the Light of Two Cunei-form Tablets from Tell Hadidrdquo TA 27 (2000) 159ndash88 For references in Sargonrsquos inscriptions todeportations of various other people to ldquoḪattirdquo Amurru Hamath and Damascus see GrantFrame ldquoA lsquoNewrsquo Cylinder Inscription of Sargon II of Assyria from Melidrdquo in God(s) TreesKings and Scholars Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola ed MikkoLuukko Raija Mattila and Saana Svaumlrd (Helsinki The Finnish Oriental Society 2009) 65ndash82esp 77 Fuchs Die Annalen des Jahres 711 vChr 85 contends that the 711 BCE edition (whose pre-served section dates all of Sargonrsquos military accomplishments back by one year assigning eventsof the fifth palucirc to the fourth for example) did probably not yet include the episode of the con-quest of Samaria His arguments seem persuasive even though some uncertainty remains Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 82ndash188

70 Eckart Frahm

17) [bēlndashpāḫati elišunu aškunma biltu] ma-da-at-tu ki-i ša aacuteš-šu-ri e‐mid‐su‐nu‐ti k[a‐ri mātmuṣur kangu aptema]

Notes to the text Line 10ndash 11 tentatively restored after Text 1 (Ashur Charter) l 16 the otherequally uncertain restorations follow Text 8 (Nimrud Prism) iv 25ndash41 and Text 9 (Khorsa-bad Display Inscription) ll 23ndash25 (see Tadmor JCS 1234) Becking The Fall of Samaria39ndash44 questioned the restoration of luacute(-uru)sa-me-r]i-na-a-a in line 11 but the parallels espe-cially with the Nimrud Prism leave little doubt that it is correct As kindly pointed out to meby Grant Frame shortly before the present volume went to press there is some evidencethat the alleged lines 12 and 13 actually do not exist This would eliminate the long gap in-dicated for line 13 The restorations suggested for lines 11 and 12 could be distributed ontolines 11 and 14 but should be considered as highly conjecturalWith regard to line 14 notethat one of Sargonrsquos new gates in Khorsabad bore the name Šamaš-mušakšid-ernettiya Thephrase UGU šaacute pa-na uacute-še-ME in line 16 is odd and it remains somewhat unclear whetherone should read the last sign as -šib or as -me

ldquohellip In [my] accession year [when I had settled on my royal throne and had been crownedwith the lordly crown (helliphellip)] the people of Samaria [who had spoken and come to an agree-ment with a king who was my enemy to no longer do service and no longer bring tribute (orwho had hellip with a king who preceded me to no longer do service and no longer bring tributehad become angry) and had done battle ndash with the strength provided by the god(s) helliphelliphelliphellip]who grant(s) my wishes [I fought] with [them 2728027290 of the people living in its (Sa-mariarsquos) midst (together with their chariots and the gods in whom they trusted)] I led awayFrom [their midst I gathered together] fifty chariot (crew)s for my royal contingent [Therest of them I settled within Assyria] I resettled [Samaria] making it more (populous)than before [I had] people from (various) lands I had conquered [enter it One of my eu-nuchs I installed over them as a provincial governor] I imposed [tribute] and taxes uponthem as (if they were) Assyrians [I opened the sealed] quay [of the land of Egypt] helliprdquo⁴⁵

My restorations of the passage just quoted are largely based on another late Sar-gon text which is known from two clay prisms from Nimrud Here the reportabout Samaria of which crucial lines are again damaged occurs in a non-chro-nological sequence of accounts of Sargonrsquos military endeavors after a descrip-tion of the campaign against Carchemish (which happened in 717 BCE)

Text 8 Nimrud Prism (covers events up to 706 BCE)⁴⁶ col iv

25) [luacute(-uru)sa]-me-ri-na-a-a ša it-ti LUGAL26) [nakiri(or ālik pāni)]-ia a-na la e-peš ar-du-ti

As already pointed out later in the Annals in a report about the seventh palucirc (= 715 BCE)Sargon claims that he settled various Arab tribes including the Tamudi in Samaria (ina urusa-me-ri-na uacute-še-šib) (Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 110 ll 120ndash23) Edition Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon IIrdquo 173ndash98 I have not been able to collate thetext


27) [u lā na]-še-e bil-ti28) [id-bu-b]u([x x (x)] ) ig(or ik)-me-lu-ma e-pu-šuacute ta-ḫa-zu29) [i-n]a e-muq DINGIRMEŠ GALMEŠ E[N]MEŠ-ia30) [i]t-ti-šuacute-nu am-da-ḫi-[iṣ-ma]31) [2]0+7 lim 2 me 80 UNMEŠ a-di gišGIG[IRMEŠ-šuacute-nu]32) ugrave DINGIRMEŠ ti-ik-li-šuacute-un šal-la-t[i-iš]33) am-nu 2 me gišGIGIRMEŠ ki-ṣir LUGA[L-ti-ia]34) ina ligraveb-bi-šuacute-nu ak-ṣur-⸢ma⸣35) si-it-ta-ti-šuacute-nu36) i-na qeacute-reb KUR aš-šurki uacute-šaacute-aṣ-bit37) urusa-me-ri-na uacute-ter-ma UGU šaacute pa-ni38) uacute-še-šib(or me) UNMEŠ KURKUR ki-šit-ti ŠUII-ia39) i-na ligraveb-bi uacute-še-rib luacutešu-utndashSAG-ia40) luacuteENndashNAM UGU-šuacute-nu aacuteš-kun-ma41) it-ti UNMEŠ KUR aš-šurki am-nu-šuacute-nu-ti

Notes to the text Line 28 The reading [id-bu-b]u ig-me-lu (which would make perfect senseif the passage is indeed about a Samarian conspiracy with an ldquoenemy kingrdquo) is new andeven though uncertain in my view the only feasible one that has so far been suggestedTadmor restored [a-ḫa-me]š ig-me-lu-ma⁴⁷ but this seems at odds with Akkadian semanticsDalley proposed to read [ibbalkitūikpudū] ikmilūma⁴⁸ but if the copy is accurate this re-storation cannot be correct either⁴⁹ Line 33 In her contribution to this volume Karen Rad-ner argues that the number 200 refers to chariot crewswhereas the number 50 in the Khor-sabad Annals (Text 7 line 15) is used to count the chariots taken from Samaria

ldquoThe people of Samaria who had spoken and come to an agreement with a king [who was]my [enemy] to no longer do service and no longer bring tribute (or who had hellip with a king[who preceded] me to no longer do service and no longer bring tribute had become angry)and had done battle ndash with the strength provided by the great gods my lords I fought withthem 27280 people together with [their] chariots and the gods in whom they trusted Icounted [as] spoil I gathered from their midst 200 chariot (crew)s for my royal contingentThe rest of them I settled within Assyria I resettled Samaria making it more (populous)than before I had people from (various) lands I had conquered enter into it One of my eu-nuchs I installed over them as a provincial governor and I counted them among the peopleof Assyria (followed by a report about the opening of the ldquosealed quayrdquo of Egypt)rdquo

The Samaria accounts of the Khorsabad Annals and the Nimrud Prism are sim-ilar but not identical which means that the restorations offered above for the for-mer on the basis of the latter remain somewhat uncertain Among the notewor-thy features of the texts is the much discussed and theologically intriguing

Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 34 Stephanie Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sar-gon IIrdquo Iraq 47 (1985) 31ndash48 esp 36 Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 469ndash70 followed Dalley and tentatively translated ldquowhoagreed [and plotted] with a king [hostile to] merdquo

72 Eckart Frahm

statement (preserved only in the Nimrud Prism) that Sargon took away ldquothe godsof Samariardquo Whether it is simply a topos added to the account as a rhetorical-ideological flourish or a reference to an actual event cannot be determined withcertainty it is worth mentioning though that the statement occurs only here⁵⁰Also remarkable is that the two texts mention the incorporation of substantialnumbers of Samarian chariot (crew)s into the Assyrian army The significanceof this segment of the Samarian troops is confirmed by references to equestrianofficers from Samaria in archival texts from Nimrud from the late eighth centu-ry⁵sup1 and by Shalmaneser IIIrsquos Kurkh inscription which claims that the Israeliteshad provided 2000() chariots for the army assembled for the battle of Qarqar in853 BCE⁵sup2

One key problem with the passage in the Nimrud Prism is to establish wheth-er Sargon claims in line 26 that the people of Samaria rebelled during the reignldquoof a king who preceded merdquo that is Shalmaneser V or conspired with ldquoa kingwho was my enemyrdquo that is Yau-birsquodi From a grammatical and semantic pointof view both restorations itti šarri ālik pāniya and itti šarri nakiriya are possibleSince the Khorsabad Annals date the episode to 722 BCE it may at first glanceseem more likely that the reference is to Sargonrsquos unloved predecessor andnot to Yau-birsquodi whose revolt apparently happened later⁵sup3 But things are not

Note however that 2Kgs 1834 (which is part of a message delivered by the Assyrian ChiefCupbearer to the people of Jerusalem in the name of King Sennacherib) seems to imply thatthe Assyrians had in fact once taken away ldquothe gods of Samariardquo For discussion see the ar-ticles by Uehlinger and Narsquoaman mentioned above in n 2 See Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotryrdquo 31ndash48 See A Kirk Grayson Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858ndash745 BC) (Tor-onto University of Toronto Press 1996) A0102 ii 91 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoTwo Notes on the Mono-lith Inscription of Shalmaneser III from Kurkhrdquo TA 3 (1976) 89ndash 106 esp 97ndash102 has arguedthat the ldquo2 limrdquo (ldquo2000rdquo) of the text may be a mistake for ldquo2 merdquo (ldquo200rdquo) Since the signsLIM and ME are quite similar this cannot be excluded but some uncertainty remains Graysonin his edition accepted the higher number Even if this should turn out to be mistaken the num-bers given for the Israelite chariot (crew)s in the aforementioned inscriptions still seem to sug-gest that Israel may have been a more eminent political player in the ninth and eighth centuriesBCE than many modern scholars inspired by ldquominimalistrdquo trends in recent biblical scholarshiphave come to believe There is also the issue that Sargonrsquos inscriptions otherwise rarely use the title šarru for Yau-birsquodi It is not quite correct however as claimed by Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotryrdquo 36 that the titleis not attested for him anywhere ndash some late Sargon texts (see below Texts 13ndash 15 l 53) do callYau-birsquodi šarru The Juniper Palace Inscription (Text 5) identifies him moreover as a malku atitle that is also found as pointed out by Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo 471 in a passagethat mentions Yau-birsquodi together with other rulers (Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsa-


quite that clear ndash there is a way to interpret the evidence in line with the newrestoration suggested by me for iv 28 of the Nimrud Prism which presupposesthat the text does allude to the Yau-birsquodi revolt The compilers of the KhorsabadAnnals might have assigned a victory over Samaria achieved by the Assyrians inthe immediate aftermath of their defeat of Yau-birsquodi to Sargonrsquos accession yearperhaps conflating it with a successful earlier Assyrian attack late in the reignof Shalmaneser⁵⁴ while also adding remarks on actions taken against Samariain the aftermath of the events of 720 BCE

All this may seem unduly complicated but one needs to keep in mind asalready realized by Tadmor⁵⁵ that the ostensibly accurate chronological scaffold-ing of the Annals text is somewhat deceptive The resettling of Samaria and itsreorganization as a province for example occurred sometime after the quellingof the Yau-birsquodi revolt in 720 BCE the deportation of the Samarian people alsodescribed in the Bible (2Kgs 176)⁵⁶ and undoubtedly a historical reality⁵⁷ musthave taken place over a longer period of time if one considers the logistical chal-lenges⁵⁸ and the commercial contacts with Egypt likewise assigned by the An-nals to 722 BCE might in fact not have been initiated before 716 BCE⁵⁹

That the compilers of Sargonrsquos Annals combined military actions the Assyr-ians had undertaken against Samaria at different points in time in an account ofonly one year 722 BCE to fill out the gap left by the kingrsquos inability to campaign

bad 261 l 22) Clearly then Sargon and his scribes were not entirely unwilling to grant Yau-birsquodi royal status If Samaria was indeed conquered in 722 BCE (which we suggest below in section 3) thenSargon who assumed his office quite late in that year in the tenth month can hardly have ex-perienced this event as king If he participated at all in the assault on the city then it was as ageneral of Shalmaneser V Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 22ndash40 77ndash 100 The Biblical text claims that the Assyrian king placed the Israelites ldquoin Halah (Ḫalaḫḫu inthe Assyrian core area) Gozan (Guzana on the Khabur River) and Mediardquo See Radnerrsquos chapterin this volume For evidence for the enlistment of equestrian officers from Samaria by the Assyrians seeDalley ldquoForeign Chariotryrdquo 31ndash48 and the previous remarks While the Assyrian reportsabout the deportation of the Israelites are in essence trustworthy the accuracy of the numbersSargonrsquos inscriptions provide for the deported people can of course be questioned even thoughthey do not seem completely over the top see Marco De Odorico The Use of Numbers and Quan-tifications in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project1995) 52 114ndash 15 Radner in her contribution to this volume stresses that the Israelites cannot have arrived inMedia before 716 BCE It is of course possible that they stayed in a third location before theywere sent on their final journey See Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 35ndash36

74 Eckart Frahm

in the months following his accession⁶⁰ is therefore a possibility that deservesserious consideration It may well be that they initially produced an accountof this type for a text without chronological markers such as the NimrudPrism and then simply copied it perhaps with some adaptations into the An-nals If this is what happened one should not make too much of the fact thatthe Annals ascribe the Samarian rebellion to ldquothe people of Samariardquo and notto their king Given the deceptive chronology of the account one cannot excludethat the last king of Israel Hoshea remained in office until the end of the Assyr-ian siege presumably in 722 BCE and that the period in which the Samarianswere kingless only began thereafter⁶sup1

In Sargonrsquos so-called Display Inscription from Khorsabad like the NimrudPrism a late text that does not organize the kingrsquos military accomplishmentschronologically the victory over Samaria is described as well in an abbreviatedand slightly modified form

Text 9 Khorsabad Display Inscription (covers events up to 707 BCE)⁶sup2 Samaria

23) helliphellip urusa-me-ri-na al-me ak-šud24) 27 (var 24) lim 2 me 80 (var 90) UNMEŠ a-šib ŠAgrave-šuacute aacuteš-lu-la 50 gišGIGIRMEŠ ina ŠAgrave-

šuacute-nu ak-ṣur-ma ugrave si-it-tu-ti i-nu-šuacute-nu uacute-šaacute-ḫi-iz luacutešu-utndashSAG-ia UGU-šuacute-nu aacuteš-kun-maGUacuteUN LUGAL maḫ-re-e

25) e-mid-su-nu-ti helliphellip

ldquohellip I besieged and conquered Samaria 272802729024280 of the people living in its (Sa-mariarsquos) midst I led away From their midst I gathered together fifty chariot (crew)s I let therest take up their crafts again I installed over them one of my eunuchs and imposed onthem tribute (as under) a previous king helliprdquo

The account follows a short report about the battle of Der and precedes oneabout Ḫanunu of Gaza similar to the Annals It differs from all the other descrip-tions of Sargonrsquos confrontation with Samaria in two important respects One isthat it claims that Sargon ldquobesieged and conqueredrdquo Samaria at some point

That the scribes of Sargonrsquos Khorsabad Annals reassigned the battles the Assyrians fought inBabylonia in 720 BCE to Sargonrsquos ldquofirst yearrdquo ie 721 BCE seems obvious see Fuchs Die In-schriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 88ndash89 ll 18ndash23 The matter has a bearing on attempts to explain the confusing chronological data 2Kgs 17and 2Kgs 18 provide for Hoshea Much of this confusion would of course disappear if the state-ments made in 2Kgs 173ndash5 were to be understood for the most part as ldquoa theological commentin narrative formrdquo originating from the time when the books of Chronicles were composedwhich is the argument made by Levin in his chapter in this volume Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 189ndash248


This statement is in marked contrast to the Nimrud Prismwhich only talks aboutldquofightingrdquo (maḫāṣu) with the Samarians Particularly conspicuous is the use ofthe verb lamucirc ldquoto besiegerdquo a term that brings to mind the claim in 2Kgs 175(and 189) that ldquothe king of Assyriardquo (according to the context Shalmaneser) ldquobe-siegedrdquo ( רציו ) SamariaWhether we should consider the Display Inscriptionrsquos ref-erence to a siege of Samaria as a literary topos⁶sup3 a lie⁶⁴ or a statement that has ahistorical fundamentum in re ndash either in events from the end of the reign of Shal-maneser V or in incidents that happened in 720 BCE ndash remains somewhat un-clear

The second item setting the passage quoted above apart is the statement thata previous Assyrian king had once imposed tribute on Samaria This can only bea reference to either Tiglath-pileser III or Shalmaneser V

The texts from the last years of Sargonrsquos reign also include detailed accountsof the Yau-birsquodi episode In the Khorsabad Annals the episode is attributed toSargonrsquos second regnal year as in the Ashur Charter (and the NajafehabadStele) and follows an expanded report about the battle of Der and subsequentskirmishes with Aramaean tribesmen now ndash falsely ndash reassigned to the kingrsquosfirst regnal year

Text 10 Khorsabad Annals (covers events up to 707 BCE)⁶⁵ Hamath

23) helliphellip i-na 2-i BALA-ia mi-lu-b[i-iʾ-di kuramatāyu helliphellip]24) [helliphellip] DAGAL-tim i-na uruqar-qa-ri uacute-p[a]-ḫir-ma ma-mit [ilāni rabucircti helliphellip]25) [helliphellip arpadda ṣimirra uru]di-maš-q[a urus]a-me-ri-[na ittiya] u[š‐bal]‐k[it‐ma helliphellip]

ldquohellip In my second regnal year Ilu-birsquodi [of Hamath hellip] gathered [hellip] the vast [hellip] in the city ofQarqar and [hellip transgressed] the oath [(sworn) by the great gods hellip] He prompted [the citiesof Arpad Ṣimirra] Damascus and Samaria to rebel [against me and hellip]rdquo

Another version of an annalistic Sargon text only recently published and of un-certain date provides a slightly better preserved similar version of this episode

The expression alme akšud is extremely common in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions It should be noted that the Khorsabad Display Inscription includes at least one evident his-torical falsehood the claim in ll 133ndash34 that Sargon had managed to lead Marduk-apla-iddina IIand his family into captivity see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 351 n 479 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 82ndash188

76 Eckart Frahm

Text 11 Mosul Annals (covers events up to [hellip])⁶⁶

4) [helliphellip ina šanecirc] BALA-ia mdia-uacutendashbi-irsquo-di5) [amattāya lā bēl kussecirc lā šininti ekalli ša iana rērsquoucirct] UNMEŠ ši-mat-su la ši-mat6) [helliphellip uacute]-ri-d[a]m-ma it-ti luacuteERIMMEŠ ḫup-ši7) [helliphellipnāš ka-b]a-bu gišaz-⸢ma⸣-[ru]-uacute uacute-maš-šir-ma8) [helliphellip i-n]a uruqar-qa-ri š[a] i-na GUacute9) [arante hellip ṣāb(ē)() hellip rapašti() uacute-paḫ-ḫi]r-ma ma-mit DINGIRMEŠ GALMEŠ10) [hellip māt amurru (rapaštu) () ultu S]AGMEŠ-šaacute a-di še-p[i]-te-šaacute it-ti-ia11) [ušbalkitma pacirc ēdacirc ušaškinma ikṣura () tāḫāzu () (hellip) a]-na KUR aš-šurki UN[MEŠ]-šaacute

ḪUL-tu12) [lā ṭābtu ubarsquorsquoima (helliphellip) i]l-qa-a še-ṭu-uacute-tuacute u[ru]⸢ar⸣-[pad-da]13) [(uruhellip) uruṣimirra () (uruhellip) uruhellip]-tu urudi-maš-qu urusa-mir-i-n[a]14) [(upaḫḫirma) ana idišu uterra () (hellip) DU]MUMEŠ KUR aš-šurki ša i-na qeacute-reb15) [māt amatti () helliphellip] ba-šu-uacute ki-i DIŠ-en id-duk-ma16) [napištu ul ēzib helliphellip] ⸢a⸣-na dENZU LUGAL DINGIRMEŠ be-el KURKUR17) [helliphellip n]a-ki-ri mu-ḫal-liq za-ma-ni EN-ia18) [(helliphellip) qātāya aššima() aššu() kašād()] KUR a-ma-at-ti sa-kap19) [Yau-birsquodi helliphellip] MARTUki DAGAL-tim am-ḫur-ma20) [helliphellip]-uacute aacuteš-šu UNMEŠ-šuacute

Notes to the text Lines 15 and 19 restored after Text 3 (Tell Tayinat Stele) ll 5rsquo 7rsquo

ldquo[hellip In] my [second] regnal year Yau-birsquodi [of Hamath (who was) not the rightful throne-holder (who was) unfit for (living in) a palace and as whose] fate it had not been decreed[that he would (ever) shepherd] the people [hellip] came down [hellip] and together with a troop ofcommoners [hellip bearers of] shields and lances he left [hellip] In the city of Qarqar which is onthe bank [of the Orontes hellip] he gathered [the troops of the vast land of Amurru (or vasttroops)] and [transgressed] the oath (sworn) by the great gods [hellip] [He prompted the(vast) land of Amurru from] its upper end to its lower end [to rebel] against me [achievedunity (among its citizens) and prepared for battle (hellip)]Against the land of Assyria and her people [he (Yau-birsquodi) intended (to do)] evil [things thatwere not good (hellip)] and he treated (them) with insolence [He gathered] the cities of Arpad[(hellip) Ṣimirra (hellip) hellip]tu Damascus and Samaria [and brought them to his side (hellip)] He kil-led the citizens of Assyria who were present in [the land of Hamath hellip] all together [and leftno one alive (hellip)][I lifted my hands] to Sicircn the king of the gods and lord of the lands [hellip who vanquishes] thefoes and destroys the enemies my lord and implored him (to help me) [conquer] the landof Hamath overthrow [Yau-birsquodi and hellip] the wide land of Amurru (20) [hellip] they [hellip] Because(of) his people [hellip] (remainder of text lost)rdquo

Edition Eckart Frahm ldquoA Sculpted Slab with an Inscription of Sargon II Mentioning the Re-bellion of Yau-birsquodi of Hamathrdquo AoF 40 (2013) 42ndash54


This text from an unknown place in the Assyrian heartland⁶⁷ offers interestingadditional details about Yau-birsquodirsquos revolt especially with regard to the killingspree on which his supporters went but apart from apparently listing several ad-ditional cities involved in the insurrection it provides few new data on Samariaso there is no need to discuss it here at length The same applies to the reportabout the revolt in Sargonrsquos Display Inscription from Khorsabad which is sepa-rated from the Samaria episode by a number of other campaign accounts andseems to be more stereotypical than the annalistic texts

Text 12 Khorsabad Display Inscription (covers events up to 707 BCE)⁶⁸ Ha-math

33) mdia-uacute-bi-irsquo-di kura-ma-ta-a-a ṣa-ab ḫup-ši la EN gišGUZA luacuteḫat-tu-uacute lem-nu a-na LUGAL-ut KUR a-ma-at-ti ŠAgrave-šuacute ik-pu-ud-ma uruar-pad-da uruṣi-mir-ra urudi-maš-qa urusa-me-ri-na34) it-ti-ia uš-bal-kit-ma pa-a e-da-a uacute-šaacute-aacuteš-kin-ma ik-ṣu-ra MEgrave um-ma-na-at gap-šaacute-a-tidaš-šur ad-ke-ma ina uruqar-qa-ri URU na-ram-i-šuacute šaacute-a-šuacute a-di mun-daḫ-ṣe-šuacute35) al-me ak-šud-su uruqar-qa-ru ina dgiacutera aq-mu šaacute-a-šuacute ma-šak-šuacute a-ku-uṣ ina qeacute-rebURUMEŠ šuacute-nu-ti EN ḫi-iṭ-ṭi a-duk-ma su-lum-mu-uacute uacute-šaacute-aacuteš-kin 2 me gišGIGIRMEŠ 6 meanšepeacutet-ḫal-lim36) i-na ŠAgrave UNMEŠ KUR a-ma-at-ti ak-ṣur-ma UGU ki-ṣir LUGAL-ti-ia uacute-rad-di helliphellip

ldquoYau-birsquodi of Hamath a commoner (who was) not the rightful throne-holder an evil Hittiteset his heart on becoming the king of the land of Hamath He prompted Arpad ṢimirraDamascus and Samaria to rebel against me achieved unity (among them) and preparedfor battleI mobilized the vast troops of Assur and besieged and captured him together with his fight-ers in Qarqar the city he loved I burnt Qarqar with fire As for him I flayed his skin I killedthose who had committed crimes and established peace in those cities I gathered fromamong the people of Hamath 200 chariot (crew)s and 600 cavalry troops and addedthem to my royal contingent

Noteworthy here is the remark that those who had committed crimes that is hadopposed the Assyrians had been killed by Sargon in the cities involved in theinsurrection including Samaria

A few additional texts from late in Sargonrsquos reign provide yet another ac-count of Yau-birsquodirsquos revolt They include Sargonrsquos stele from Cyprus a cylinder

For possible find spots see the discussion in Frahm ldquoA Sculpted Slabrdquo 52ndash53 In 2001 theslab was definitely in the Mosul Museum but it may have been sent to Baghdad in 2003 andthus have escaped the destruction wrought upon the Assyrian artifacts in the Mosul Museumby supporters of ISIS in 2015 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 189ndash248 Orthographical variantsare not noted in the following

78 Eckart Frahm

inscription from Nineveh and the so-called Borowski Stele which was probablyerected like some earlier Sargon stelae in the territory of Hamath

Texts 13ndash 15 Cyprus Stele⁶⁹ Nineveh Cylinder⁷⁰ Borowski Stele⁷sup1 (all appa-rently covering events up to 707 BCE)

Line count after the Cyprus Stele orthographic variants not noted

51) KUR a-ma-at-tu a-na paṭ g[im-ri-šaacute]52) a-bu-bi-iš as-p[u-un]53) mdia-uacute-bi-irsquo-di LUGAL-šuacute-nu⁷sup254) a-di kim-ti-šuacute mun-daḫ-ṣ[e-e-šuacute]55) šal-lat KUR-šuacute ka-mu-us-su56) a-na KUR aš-šurki ub-la57) 2 me (var 3 me) gišGIGIRMEŠ 6 me anšepeacutet-ḫal-lum58) (na-aacuteš) giška-ba-bu gišaz-ma-re-e59) i-na ligraveb-bi-šuacute-nu ak-ṣur-ma60) UGU ki-ṣir MAN-ti-ia uacute-rad-di61) 6 lim 3 me luacuteaš-šur-a-a EN hi-iṭ-ṭi62) ina qeacute-reb KUR ha-am-ma-ti uacute-še-šib-ma63) luacutešu-utndashSAG-ia luacuteENndashNAM64) UGU-šuacute-nu aacuteš-kun-ma biacutel-tu ma-da-at-tu65) uacute-kin UGU-šuacute-un

ldquoI swept away the land of Hamath with all its territory like a flood I brought Yau-birsquoditheir king in fetters together with his family and [his] fighters and (other) captives fromhis land to Assyria 200300 chariot (crew)s⁷sup3 and 600 cavalry bearers of shields and lancesI gathered together from among them and added to my royal contingent I settled in themidst of the land of Hamath 6300 Assyrians who had committed crimes I appointed a eu-nuch of mine over them to serve as provincial governor and imposed upon them tribute andtaxesrdquo

Edition Franccediloise Malbran-Labat ldquoSection 4 Inscription assyrienne (No 4001)rdquo in Kitiondans les textes ed Marguerite Yon (Paris Eacuteditions Recherche sur les Civilisations 2006)345ndash54 Edition Reginald C Thompson ldquoA Selection from the Cuneiform Historical Texts from Nine-veh (1927ndash32)rdquo Iraq 7 (1940) 85ndash 131 esp 86ndash89 So called after its former owner Elie Borowski Edition J David Hawkins ldquoThe New SargonStele from Hamardquo in From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea Studies on the History of Assyria andBabylonia in Honour of A K Grayson ed Grant Frame (Leiden Istanbul Nederlands Instituutvoor het Nabije Oosten 2004) 151ndash64 The royal title of Yau-birsquodi is preserved in the texts of the Nineveh Cylinder and (albeit thesign LUGAL is damaged) the Cyprus Stele on the Borowski Stele ll 51ndash56 are lost Note that exactly the same number 200 is given in the Nimrud Prism (Text 8) for chariot(crew)s from Samaria


The Borowski Stele (Side B) has instead of ll 61ndash65

5) 6 lim 3 me luacuteaš-šur-a-a EN hi-iṭ-ṭi6) giacutel-la-su-nu a-miš-ma7) re-e-ma ar-ši-šuacute-nu-ti-ma8) ina qeacute-reb KURha-am-ma-ti uacute-še-šib-šuacute-nu-ti9) GUacuteUN ma-da-tu za-bal ku-du-u-ri10) a-lak KASKAL ki-i šaacute MANMEŠ ADMEŠ-iaacute11) a-na mir-hu-le-na kura-ma-ta-a-a12) e-mid-du e-mid-su-nu-ti

ldquoI disregarded the guilt of 6300 Assyrians who had committed crimes had mercy on themand settled them in the midst of the land of Hamath I imposed upon them tribute taxesthe bearing of the basket (ie corveacutee work) and (the duty) to go on campaigns just as myroyal forefathers had imposed (these things) on Irḫulena of Hamath (a contemporary ofShalmaneser III)rdquo

What is particularly important here is Sargonrsquos claim that he had sent to Hamathsome 6300 Assyrian ldquocriminalsrdquo in all likelihood people who had opposed himin the wake of his accession to the throne Given that Assyrian citizens in Ha-math had been the explicit targets of Yau-birsquodirsquos earlier rampage (see Texts 1and 11) this forced move was probably not a reason for much joy for the individ-uals in question one wonders though why Sargon was not concerned that theunfaithful Assyrians might make common cause with the people of Hamath

There are a few minor references to Samaria and Hamath in other Sargon in-scriptions mostly from Khorsabad on cylinder fragments bull colossi thresh-olds and wall slabs The texts in question which list the kingrsquos military accom-plishments in a non-chronological order do not provide anything that wouldchange in a major way the overall picture but it seems worthwhile to quote atleast those passages that mention Samaria and Bīt-Ḫumria ie Israel by name

Texts 16ndash 18 (all covering events up to 707 BCE)

Display Inscription XIV⁷⁴

15) [aacute]š-lul uruši-nu-uḫ-tuacute urusa-mer-i-na ugrave gi-mir KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a

ldquoI plundered (or I carried away people from) Šinuḫtu Samaria and all of Bīt-Ḫumriardquo

Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 75ndash81

80 Eckart Frahm

Bull Inscription⁷⁵

21) sa-pi-in urusa-me-ri-na ka-la KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a KUR kas-ku

ldquo(Sargon is) the one who crushed Samaria all of Bīt-Ḫumria and the land of Kaskurdquo

Threshold Inscription no 4⁷⁶

31ndash32) ka-ši-id urusa-mer-i-na ugrave gi-mir KUR Eacutendashḫu-um-ri-a

ldquo(Sargon is) the one who conquered Samaria and all of Bīt-Ḫumriardquo

Noteworthy in these summary accounts is the aggressive language used by Sar-gon who talks about having ldquoplunderedrdquo ldquocrushedrdquo and ldquoconqueredrdquo SamariaIn light of the archaeological evidence which does not suggest that the Assyri-ans inflicted any major destruction on Samaria one is however probably welladvised not to take all the aforementioned statements as accurate descriptionsof what actually happened to the city⁷⁷

Sargonrsquos main wife (MUNUSEacuteGAL) at least later in his reign was a womanby the name of Atalyā As observed by Dalley this name is reminiscent of that ofthe ninth century Israelite princess ctlyh[w] who later married into the royal fam-ily of Judah (see 2Kgs 816ndash 1116)⁷⁸ Drawing on Dalleyrsquos idea that Atalyā mighthave been a Judean princess it might seem tempting to assume that she was infact of Israelite backgroundwhich if true would shed some interesting psycho-historical light on Sargonrsquos approach towards Samaria but the uncertainties inidentifying Atalyārsquos true background are so substantial⁷⁹ that it seems preferableto abstain from further speculation

Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 60ndash74 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad 259ndash71 Thus also Tappy ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samariardquo Stephanie Dalley ldquoYabacirc Atalyā and the Foreign Policy of Late Assyrian Kingsrdquo SAAB 12(1998) 83ndash98 For a linguistic discussion of the name see Ran Zadok ldquoNeo-Assyrian Notesrdquo in Treasureson Camelsrsquo Humps hellip Historical and Literary Studies from the Ancient Near East Presented to Is-rael Ephrsquoal ed Mordechai Cogan and Danrsquoel Kahn (Jerusalem Magnes Press 2008) 312ndash30esp 327ndash29 for the problem in general Eckart Frahm ldquoFamily Matters Psychohistorical Reflec-tions on Sennacherib and His Timesrdquo in Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem Story Historyand Historiography ed Isaac Kalimi and Seth Richardson (Leiden Brill 2014) 163ndash222esp 182ndash89 with earlier literature


3 Conclusions and Final Thoughts

The main goal of the previous section was to provide readers with an opportu-nity to review in an unprejudiced way what Sargonrsquos royal inscriptions have tosay about the rebellion of Yau-birsquodi of Hamath and the fall of Samaria No sys-tematic attempt was made to establish the actual chronology of the eventsand provide a historical synthesis It would be somewhat cowardly howeverif the present author failed to conclude this article without a few remarks onthese issues however provisional they may be

The point of departure for any discussion of the last years of the kingdom ofIsrael has to be the short note in the Babylonian Chronicle (i 27ndash28) that claimsthat Shalmaneser V at an undetermined point after his accession to the Assyrianthrone ldquoravaged Samariardquo (urušaacute-ma-ra-rsquoi-in iḫ-te-pe)⁸⁰ The note confirms what2Kgs 173ndash5 and 189ndash 10 have to say about King Shalmaneserrsquos crucial role inthe downfall of Samaria It also indicates something else not sufficientlystressed in the secondary literature the defeat of Samaria must have been amajor turning point ndash otherwise it would hardly have been the only deed ascri-bed to Shalmaneser in the Babylonian Chronicle

It stands to reason that an event so important would also have been men-tioned in the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle which is unfortunately badly dam-aged for the period in question Based on Millardrsquos copy and edition of theonly surviving fragment K 3202⁸sup1 the historical events listed for the years 727to 722 BCE are the following

Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles 73 Some scholars have questioned whetherthe text is really about Samaria suggesting the alternative reading urušaacute-ba-ra-rsquoi-in but Dubov-skyacute after carefully studying the forms of the signs MA and BA on the Chronicle tablet has con-vincingly demonstrated that the reading urušaacute-ma-ra-rsquoi-in is to be preferred which would confirmthe Biblical passages talking about Shalmaneser as the conqueror of Samaria (Peter DubovskyacuteldquoDid Shalmaneser V Conquer the City of Samaria An Investigation into the maba-sign inChronicle 1rdquo Or 80 (2011) 423ndash35) The date of the devastation inflicted on Samaria is not speci-fied in the Babylonian Chronicle ndash there is no need to assume as Narsquoaman ldquoThe HistoricalBackgroundrdquo 206ndash25 did that the passage refers to an assault on the city in Shalmaneserrsquosaccession year and the horizontal ruling in the text between the reference to the ravaging of Sa-maria and the following note about Shalmaneserrsquos death in the tenth month of his fifth year(ie 722 BCE) does not in my view necessarily mean that Samaria was conquered before722 For further discussion of these matters and the meaning of ḫepucirc in the Babylonian Chroni-cle see Becking The Fall of Samaria 22ndash25 Alan R Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-Assyr-ian Text Corpus Project 1994) 45ndash46 pl 15 B 3 See also Jean-Jacques Glassner Mesopotamian

82 Eckart Frahm

727 a-na ur[u hellip] [(hellip) SILIM-ma-n]undashMAŠ ina gi[šGUZA ittūšib]726 i-[na māti]725 a-n[a hellip]724 a-n[a hellip]723 a-[na hellip]

722 [(hellip) Šarru-ukīn ina kussecirc ittūšib (hellip)]

727 (The army fought) against the city [hellip] [(hellip)]⁸sup2 Shalmaneser [sat] on the throne726 (The army the king stayed) in [the land (of Assyria)]725 (The army fought) against [hellip]724 (The army fought) against [hellip]723 (The army fought) against [hellip]

722 [(hellip)⁸sup3 Sargon [sat] on the throne (hellip)]

Another fragment (Rm 2 97)⁸⁴ begins with two poorly preserved lines that eitherdeal with the years 721 and 720 BCE respectively or with 720 BCE alone⁸⁵ Tad-mor assuming the latter⁸⁶ restored [ana māt ḫat-t]i⁸⁷ [hellip uššū ša bīt DN ša GNkar]-ru ldquo[(The army fought) against the land of] Ḫatti (ie northern Syria) [hellip the

Chronicles (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2004) 174ndash75 Unfortunately no photo ofK 3202 is available on the CDLI website and I was unable to collate the fragment in London It is possible that the beginning of the line included a reference to the date of the kingrsquos ac-cession to the throne which occurred according to the Babylonian Chronicle on the 25th of Ṭe-bētu For a parallel see the Eponym Chroniclersquos reference to the accession of Tiglath-pileser in745 BCE (Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 43) As in the entry for 727 BCE there might have been a reference to the kingrsquos accession datewhich in the case of Sargon was the 12th day of the month Ṭebētu if we are to believe the Bab-ylonian Chronicle The beginning of the entry might have mentioned another military campaignundertaken by Shalmaneser shortly before his death for parallels see the entries in the EponymChronicle for the years 727 and 705 (Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 45 48) Lesslikely is that there was a reference to the turmoil that seems to have accompanied Sargonrsquos ac-cession Considering how late in the year this last event occurred the entry did probably not in-clude a reference to yet another episode Edition and copy Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 46 pl 16 B 4 The uncertainty is due to the fact that several entries in this Eponym Chronicle fragment runover more than one line Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 85 The photo on the CDLI website confirms Millardrsquos copy of the modest traces at the end of theline The earlier copy by Carl Bezold ldquoSome Unpublished Assyrian lsquoLists of Officialsrsquordquo Proceed-ings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 11 (1889) 286ndash87 esp pl 3 after p 286 does not in-dicate any traces for the line in question


foundations of the temple of DN of the city of GN] were laidrdquo⁸⁸ which is alto-gether not implausible albeit some uncertainty remains In case the first twolines cover two years an alternative restoration might be for the first one (721BCE) [ina KU]R ldquo[(The army the king stayed) in the] land (of Assyria)rdquo whichwould be in line with what is otherwise known about this year and for the sec-ond (720 BCE) [ana uruqar-qa]-ru ldquo[(The army fought) against] Qarqarrdquo ndash eventhough it must be admitted that in light of the writing conventions of the Assyr-ian Eponym Chronicles one would rather have expected ana uruqar-qa-ri⁸⁹

Both 2Kgs 173ndash6 and 2Kgs 189ndash 10 claim that Shalmaneser conquered Sa-maria after a three year siege a statement so specific that it should not be dis-missed out of hand⁹⁰ Judging from the entries the Eponym Chronicle providesfor the years 727 and 726 BCE this siege if it really took place cannot havebegun before 725 BCE It either lasted therefore from 725 to 723 BCE or from724 to 722 BCE ending with Samariarsquos downfall While the nine regnal years at-tributed to Hoshea in the Bible could be taken as pointing towards the earlierdates⁹sup1 Sargonrsquos claim in his Annals (Text 7) that the conquest of Samaria occur-red in his accession year is more easily explained if one assumes that the siegelasted from 724 to 722 BCE Clearly the siege was brought to a successful conclu-sion prior to Sargonrsquos actual accession in the tenth month of 722 BCE This isindicated by the aforementioned note in the Babylonian Chronicle by the ac-counts in 2Kgs 17 and 18 which ascribe the final breakthrough to Shalmaneserand by the fact that no military achievements are mentioned in Sargonrsquos earlyAshur Charter (Text 1) for the kingrsquos accession year and his first regnal year

Tadmorrsquos restoration of the second line follows Arthur Ungnad ldquoEponymenrdquo in RlA 2 edErich Ebeling and Bruno Meissner (Berlin de Gruyter 1938) 412ndash57 esp 433 and is inspired bythe Eponym Chroniclersquos entries for the years 788 and 717 BCE See also CAD K 209a Millard TheEponyms of the Assyrian Empire 46 and Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles 174 refrained fromoffering any restorations It is also possible that the entry for 720 BCE rather than mentioning the campaign to theLevant (in which the king did not participate after all) dealt with the battles fought by the As-syrians in Babylonia in that year Note that the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle does occasionally refer to prolonged sieges That ofthe city of Arpad is mentioned in the entries for the years 743 to 740 BCE (Millard The Eponymsof the Assyrian Empire 43ndash44) See Becking The Fall of Samaria 52ndash53 Like others Becking argues that Hoshearsquos first reg-nal year was 731 BCE Note however that the chronological data the Bible provides for Hosheaproduce so many problems that attempts to come up with a scenario that fits them all (andmoreover takes into account the Biblical report about Hoshearsquos imprisonment prior to the Assyr-ian siege) appear somewhat quixotic especially if Levin (this volume) is right and 2Kgs 173ndash5 isa late addition (see above n 61)

84 Eckart Frahm

Sargonrsquos later claim that it was actually he and not Shalmaneser who hadconquered Samaria in 722 BCE⁹sup2 can be seen as an attempt to demonstrate ina text that recorded the kingrsquos military successes on a year by year basis thathe had achieved great things from the very beginning including in his accessionyear and his first regnal year ndash when he was in fact preoccupied by the internalunrest his power grab had caused

This inner-Assyrian strife ndash whose existence can be inferred from several ofSargonrsquos inscriptions⁹sup3 ndash did not remain unobserved in the empirersquos Western pe-riphery It prompted almost immediately an anti-Assyrian rebellion which washeaded by Yau-birsquodi a political leader apparently not of royal stock operatingin the territory of Hamath Several fairly new Assyrian provinces among themArpad Ṣimirra and Damascus joined the insurrection⁹⁴ The people of Samariawho seem to have been kingless at this point but whose capital city had probablynot yet been turned into the center of an Assyrian province did so as well de-spite the strenuous siege they had apparently suffered in the previous years

In 720 BCE after a bloody battle fought in and around Qarqar on the Or-ontes an Assyrian army sent by Sargon managed to quell the rebellion captureYau-birsquodi and pacify the other participants in the insurgency It stands to reasonthat the Israelites essentially surrendered to the Assyrian troops at this pointand that it was not necessary to subject Samaria to another siege

Sargonrsquos earliest inscriptions most importantly the Ashur Charter do nottalk about how the Assyrians treated Samaria in the aftermath of their victorybut in an inscription from 713 BCE (Text 6) Sargon claims for himself to haveldquomade Bīt-Ḫumria tremblerdquo More detailed information on Samariarsquos fate is avail-able from inscriptions from the last years of Sargonrsquos reign (Texts 7ndash9 16ndash 18)These texts mention among other things the deportation of significant portionsof the Samarian people the enlistment of the Samarian chariot troops into theAssyrian army the transformation of Samaria into an Assyrian province andthe resettlement of Samaria with Arabs All these things probably happened instages and over a longer period of time the population transfer of the Arabsfor example is dated in the Annals to 715 BCE The texts now also claim that Sar-gon had ldquobesieged ldquoconqueredrdquo and ldquocrushedrdquo Samaria (Texts 9 and 17) pos-sibly alluding to the events of 722 BCE

That Sargon participated in some military capacity in the conquest of the city is possible butcannot be proven See above Texts 1 and 13ndash 15 and the discussion sections following them Arpad had become a province in 740 BCE Ṣimirra in 738 BCE and Damascus in 732 BCE seeBagg Die Assyrer und das Westland 235


Most of the late Sargon inscriptions leave the timeline of the events concern-ing Samaria unspecified Sargonrsquos Annals however as pointed out earlier fitthem into a Procrustean bed of pseudo-chronology They claim that it was inhis accession year that Sargon defeated the Samarians deported and replacedthem with other people and turned their land into a province Judging by a par-allel passage in the Nimrud Prism (Text 8) the account probably also claimedthat the Samarians had made common cause with ldquoan enemy kingrdquo an allusionin all likelihood to their alliance with Yau-birsquodi In other words in the AnnalsSargonrsquos scribes seem to have assigned events that happened at very differentstages ndash from Shalmaneserrsquos conquest of Samaria in 722 BCE to the quellingof the insurrection in the West in 720 BCE to the reorganization of Samariaand its hinterland in subsequent years ndash to Sargonrsquos accession year in whichthe king actually ruled for no more than two and a half months⁹⁵

Obviously much of this reconstruction although it follows in many waysearlier scholars such as Tadmor or Fuchs⁹⁶ remains hypothetical The problemis that the various written sources available for the last days of the kingdomof Israel contradict one another in crucial respects and cannot be fully recon-ciled As already pointed out in the introduction substantial progress willonly be possible through future discoveries ndash for example of a manuscript ofthe Assyrian Eponym Chronicle with an undamaged account of the years 727to 715 BCE Until then a full scholarly consensus regarding the events that ledto the fall of Samaria will probably remain elusive

For similar chronological manipulations in the inscriptions of Sargonrsquos successor see Liver-ani ldquoCritique of Variants and the Titulary of Sennacheribrdquo Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo 22ndash40 77ndash 100 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II ausKhorsabad 457ndash58

86 Eckart Frahm

Frederick Mario Fales

Why Israel

Reflections on Shalmaneser Vrsquos and Sargon IIrsquosGrand Strategy for the Levant

1 Introduction

This paper attempts to look at the theme of ldquothe last days of Israelrdquo from a his-torical perspective based mainly on Assyriological data and on a few gleaningsfrom archaeological reports ndash although I am fully aware that a rich and well-at-tended conference such as is gathered here on this theme would never havebeen conceived and organized if these two important bodies of data togetherwith the similarly crucial Biblical evidence and other sets of documentary mate-rials were devoid of ongoing controversy in their precise contextualization andmutual interfacing in their chronological pinpointing and in their overall impli-cations My specific approach to the theme is meant to tackle the subject fromthe point of view of a possible Assyrian ldquogrand strategyrdquo in the Levant afterthe demise of the last of the great Aramaean state Damascus in the third quar-ter of the 8th century BC We may thus start by asking ourselves two basic ques-tions can a ldquogrand strategyrdquo of the Assyrian empire be said to have existed atleast at some point in time And what could its mechanisms have been in theLevantine context sup1

A word on the state of art is due here Research on the texts of the Neo-Assyrian imperial pe-riod ndash both of official-ideological and ldquoeverydayrdquoarchival nature and scope ndash has flourishedthrough well-funded national research programs and internationally coordinated scholarly ef-forts in the last 40 years Felicitously in these two first decades of the 21st century a sufficientlevel of interpretation and publication in disseminated form has been reached as to allow notonly the (few and dwindling) ldquoinner circlerdquo specialists but also a vast (and growing) host of stu-dents of allied or connected disciplines to participate in the construction of coherent overallperspectives regarding the history of Neo-Assyrian imperial period All such perspectives ndashwhich often also include expertise on the complexity of the contemporaneous archaeologicalcontexts ndash are to be considered equally welcome insofar as they have enriched and are enrich-ing the problematical terrain on which to cast the comprehensive historical description and eval-uation of the Assyrian Empire ndash as the earliest of a set of military and political experiments inachieving ldquototal supraregional rulerdquo that characterized the Near East in the 1st millennium BCEand continued in the West into the subsequent millennium As is often the case in developingintellectual horizons a number of different interpretive models prove at this time to be mutually

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-005

2 The Grand Strategy of the Assyrians in theLevant Setting the Stage

The first question (ldquocan a grand strategy of the Assyrian state be said to have ex-istedrdquo) shows at least in my experience the interesting feature of being ac-knowledged in general ndash ie even without need for an in-depth justification ndashby a number of Ancient Near Eastern scholars both on the philological andthe archaeological side of things while it is considered debatable by othersmost often operating in the realm of world historysup2 Apart from this howeveror rather prior to it we may point out the problem of reaching an agreementon what is a ldquogrand strategyrdquo Now as the modern political scientist CS Grayhas it ldquostrategy is the bridge that relates military power to political purpose(but) it is neither military power per se nor political purposerdquosup3 This dry but

competing for recognition on the stage ndash whether models involving benchmarks of comparativehistorical trialvalidity (eg pax assyriaca ldquomilitarismrdquo or the so-called ldquoAugustan thresholdrdquo)or adaptations of pan-historical constructs to the scenario at hand (eg ldquoWorld-Systems Theo-ryrdquo) At the same time some prejudiced viewswith forerunners going back to the very infancy ofAssyriology in the late 19th century (eg concerning the Assyriansrsquo alleged ldquogreedrdquo ldquooutrightcrueltyrdquo ldquodisregard for other culturesrdquo) do not seem to have been fully eradicated through ad-equate ldquostress testsrdquo as yet but to have rather been (perhaps unconsciously) embedded withinthese new theoretical formulations In a nutshell therefore this is an exciting time for Neo-As-syrian history ndash but it is also necessary that experimenting with new frameworks and conceptsshould be held under the tight control of common senseWahrscheinlichkeit and the unyieldingburden of ldquohardrdquo evidence For a broad overview of present-day historiographical approaches tothe chronological and geographical scenario treated in the present contribution cf Joshua TWalton The Regional Economy of the Southern Levant in the 8th-7th Centuries BCE (PhD thesisHarvard University 2015 httpsdashharvardeduhandle117467381) The quest for an Assyri-an ldquoGrand Strategyrdquo as presented in this chapter in which the conquest and annexation of thekingdom of Israel could be contextualized implies no new interpretive model per se but merelya heuristic attempt to project the event of the Fall of Samaria onto a wider geographical andchronological canvas in order to evaluate the ensuing results See on the one hand eg Bradley J Parker The Mechanics of Empire The Northern Frontierof Assyria as a Case Study in Imperial Dynamics (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Pro-ject 2001) Frederick Mario Fales LrsquoImpero Assiro Storia e Amministrazione IXndashVII sec aC (Roma Bari Laterza 2001) Simo Parpola ldquoAssyriarsquos Expansion in the 8th and 7th Centuriesand Its Long-Term Repercussions in the Westrdquo in Symbiosis Symbolism and the Power of thePast ed William G Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2003) 99ndash 111On the other hand see eg Reinhard Bernbeck ldquoImperialist Networks Ancient Assyria andthe United Statesrdquo Present Pasts 2 (2010) 142ndash68 Ariel M Bagg ldquoPalestine under AssyrianRule A New Look at the Assyrian Imperial Policy in the Westrdquo JAOS 133 (2013) 119ndash44 Colin S Gray Modern Strategy (Oxford Oxford University Press 1999) 17


clear definition claims precise adaptations from the pioneering study by Carl vonClausewitz On War⁴ and ndash in more recent days ndash from Sir Basil Henry LiddellHart according to whom strategy is ldquothe art of distributing and applying militarymeans to fulfill the aims of policyrdquo⁵ With these forerunners in mind there is nodoubt that Grayrsquos definition of ldquostrategyrdquo indicates a link between specific mili-tary actions and their mid-to-long-term consequences in the future policy to beenforced or adapted vis-agrave-vis the vanquished in other words at least logicallywar comes first policy follows I dare say that this approach might at first sightstrike some as particularly fitting for the Assyrian historical evidence although Iwill attempt to show that this is decidedly not the case

We may now move to the expression ldquogrand strategyrdquo which originally wasmerely conceived as a broader and more extended form of strategy and as suchinterchanged with ldquohigher strategyrdquo in Liddell Hartrsquos definition its role as hestated was ldquoto co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation or band ofnations toward the attainment of the political object of the warrdquo This definitionin which ldquograndrdquo meant all said and done a strategy executed through inter-connections at the highest levels of the state with the marshaling of the fullrange of the statersquos resources may summon with ease (and some nostalgic pleas-ure) memory flashes of Churchillrsquos resounding speeches and of D-day⁶ but it hasbeen in recent decades superseded by a wider and more nuanced concept inwhich the stakes are more evenly distributed between wartime and peacetime

This we owe in particular to political theoreticians such as Edward N Lutt-wak and Michael Walzer⁷ who have analyzed decision-making in war and peacefinding them to be of a fully different order and in fact often oppositional so asto require entirely varying perspectives and methods of planning and thinkingHence a renewed definition of ldquogrand strategyrdquo by Luttwak himself who appliedit ndash most usefully for us ndash in his wide-ranging historical-political overviews ofthe Roman and the Byzantine empires ldquoGrand strategy is simply the level at

Carl von Clausewitz On War trans Michael Howard and Peter Peret (Princeton NJ PrincetonUniversity Press 1976) 178 Basil H Liddell Hart Strategy The Indirect Approach (London Faber amp Faber 1976) 335 In point of fact Churchill seems to have been preoccupied by the interplay between politicsand military strategy already since Word War I marked by the Gallipoli disaster 17 February1915 to 9 January 1916 when he wrote ldquoThe distinction between politics and strategy diminishesas the point of view is raised At the summit true politics and strategy are onerdquo Winston SChurchill The World Crisis 1911ndash 1918 Part 2 1915 (New York Scribner 1923) 404ndash405 froma dispatch dated 1 June 1915 ie right in the middle of the battle of attrition at Gallipoli Edward N Luttwak Strategy The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge MA Cambridge Univer-sity Press 1987) Michael Walzer Arguing about War (New Haven CT Yale University Press2004)

Why Israel 89

which knowledge and persuasion or in modern terms intelligence and diploma-cy interact with military strength to determine outcomes in a world of otherstates with their own grand strategiesrdquo⁸

We need not further pursue the ways and means by which Luttwak illustrat-ed the applications of this definition in the very complex and very different re-alities of the Roman and Byzantine empires suffice it to say that both recon-structions of this sharp political-theorist-turned-historian had to deal with theempiresrsquo multiple internal alliances and efforts at creating inner structures ofself-protection from outside perils But simply going back to his definition ofldquogrand strategyrdquo quoted above I believe there is a small but clear body of Assyr-ian textual evidence that fits it to a certain extent dating to the age of Tiglath-pileser III and especially of Sargon II although precious little of this evidenceconcerns the scenario of the Levant

A few years ago I analyzed Neo-Assyrian letters for the presence of theclause dibbī ṭābūti issīšu(nu) dabābu ldquoto speak kindly to him (or to them)rdquothrough which we can see the opening maintaining or last-resort offering ofdiplomatic or in any case non-bellicose relations between Assyria and a num-ber of polities beyond its ldquoinnerrdquo borders⁹ The best example regarding the Le-vant is actually from the age of Tiglath-pileser III in a well-known letter writtenby Qurdi-Aššur-lamur possibly the governor of Ṣimirra in Phoenicia to be datedaround 734 BCEsup1⁰

As a confirmation of the kingrsquos prior instruction ndash quoted at the outset of theletter ndash to ldquospeak kindlyrdquo to the king of Tyre the governor proceeds to describe awell-oiled mechanism of peaceful economic exploitation of this vassal polity bythe Assyrians whereby the Tyrians are allowed to occupy their wharves on theMediterranean to go in and out from the warehouses and to conduct their busi-ness by ascending Mount Lebanon and bringing down timber on which the gov-ernor has taxes levied by tax inspectors controlling the entire Lebanon range andthe coastal quays So far so good but even more interestingly the sole exceptiondescribed in the same letter ndash that of the recalcitrant Sidonians ndash entails the im-

Edward N Luttwak The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge MA CambridgeUniversity Press 2009) 409 Frederick Mario Fales ldquolsquoTo Speak Kindly to himthemrsquo as Item of Assyrian Political Dis-courserdquo in Of God(s) Trees Kings and Scholars Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honourof Simo Parpola ed Mikko Luukko Saana Svaumlrd and Raija Mattila (Helsinki Finnish OrientalSociety 2009) 27ndash40 This letter (ND 2715) has most recently been published by Mikko Luukko The Correspond-ence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from CalahNimrud (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Cor-pus Project 2012) no 22 Online version httporaccmuseumupennedusaaoP224471


mediate deployment of a well-known corps of military police (the Itursquoeans) to ter-rify the lumberjacks on the mountain and to bring the situation back to the de-sired state of fiscal normalcy As Teddy Roosevelt used to say ldquoSpeak softly butcarry a big stickrdquo indeed

But an even clearer case of what a policy of ldquokind wordsrdquo traded betweenthe Assyrians and the chiefsrepresentatives of foreign powers could entail asan alternative to the use of armed force may be viewed in a letter written by Sar-gon himself to a subordinate Aššur-šarru-uṣur The latter had related to the kingthe news that king Midas of Phrygia had captured fourteen Cilician envoys ontheir way to the enemy state of Urartu and delivered them to the AssyriansThis act of spontaneous detente prompted a joyous outburst on the part of theMesopotamian ruler ldquoMy gods Aššur Šamaš Bel and Nabucirc have now taken ac-tion and without a battle [or any]thing the Phrygian has given us his word andhas become our allyrdquosup1sup1

In sum as I noticed at the time the policy of dibbī ṭābūti ldquokind wordsrdquo refersto a backdrop of political relations meant to extend the range of action of Assyriansuzerainty beyond the strict confines of its provincial system to vassal polities orexternal allies ruling out (or minimizing to the least degree) recourse to armedforce whether threatened or carried out The Akkadian expression ndash and its ensu-ing policy of ldquosoft powerrdquo in a specific Assyrian formulation ndash seems to apply bothto initial stages of a diplomatic agreement as well as to consolidated situations ofpeaceful relations and ndash as other types of texts show ndash even to last-minute offersof dialogue without recourse to arms as eg the famous letter of Ashurbanipal tothe citizens of Babylon inciting them feelingly to submission may showsup1sup2 In thissense even the second message of Rabshakeh whatever one may think aboutits authenticity authorship and date might qualify as the expression of an Assyr-ian grand strategy in which ldquointelligence and diplomacy interact with militarystrengthrdquo as Luttwak put it

Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part I Letters from Assyria and the West (Hel-sinki Helsinki University Press 1987) no 1 7ndash 10 Online version httporaccmuseumupen-nedusaaoP224485 This is the well-known letter ABL 301 written 23II652 BCE For an edition see Simo ParpolaldquoDesperately Trying to Talk Sense A Letter of Assurbanipal Concerning his Brother Šamaš-šumu-ukīnrdquo in From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea Studies on the History of Assyria and Bab-ylonia in Honour of A K Grayson ed Grant Frame (Leiden Nederlands Instituut voor het NabijeOosten 2004) 227ndash34 and the discussion by Sanae Ito Royal Image and Political Thinking in theLetters of Assurbanipal (PhD thesis University of Helsinki 2015 httpurnfiURNISBN978-951-51-0973-6)

Why Israel 91

ldquoThus said the king of Assyria make your peace with me and come out to me so that youmay all eat from your vines and your fig trees and drink water from your cisterns until Icome and take you away to a land like your own a land of grain [fields] and vineyardsof bread and wine of olive oil and honey so that you may live and not dierdquo (2Kgs1831ndash32)

In a nutshell I would say that sufficient evidence may be summoned from As-syrian archival documentation to counteract or at least to curb the monolithicimpression that the official inscriptions of the Assyrian kings provide at a gen-eral and superficial perusal that the sole actual strategy to be ascribed to theAssyrian empire was a warmongering and relentlessly militaristic one of territo-rial annexation aimed at conquering all surrounding nations at despoiling theirresources and at uprooting their inhabitants through mass deportation This pol-icy was indisputably carried out far and wide but ndash for a comprehensive histor-ical-political reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian empire ndash it must be cast againstan alternative set of decisions which could lead to a delay or to an outright re-fraining from carrying out a set of assaults and destructions for eminently stra-tegic reasons

The fact that the Assyrian royal inscriptions due to their very nature as resgestae of the rulers with a specific emphasis on armed conquest and sometimeson the harsh punishments meted out to rebellious enemies dedicate hardly anyspace to alternative choices of this kind cannot at present ndash in the light of thequoted evidence present in epistolary or other ldquoeverydayrdquo texts ndash be used todeny the picture of a ldquogrand strategyrdquo which seems to have used all availablemeans to expand the range of Assyrian influence throughout Western AsiaAnd just to take a step further in this debate it may be observed that an imperialpolity which took time and effort as the Assyrians did to establish a vast net-work of treaties and pacts with other state or tribal formations ndash as may bemade out from the sum total of piecesfragments of direct evidence and indirectmentions ndash would seem to have decidedly been endowed with at least a generalldquogrand strategicrdquo vision of its capacities as well as of its limits

3 Tackling the Basic Issues Who ConqueredSamaria and When

We may now come to the issue of the possible application of Assyrian ldquograndstrategyrdquo to the fall of the kingdom of Israel where we can see an initial policyof non-belligerence between Shalmaneser V and Hoshea of Israel which deterio-rated into a situation of conflict from 2Kgs 173ndash6 in combination with very lim-


ited Assyrian sources Now I am aware that many papers in this monograph willbe dedicated to the long-standing problem of how many Assyrian kings con-quered Samaria one or two To cut to the chase I will state from the outsetthat I follow by and large the stance of Nadav Narsquoaman in his well-known con-tribution in Biblica of 1990with his one-king hypothesis centered on Sargon IIsup1sup3Narsquoaman maintained refining his teacher Hayim Tadmorrsquos conclusions‒ that Shalmaneser V led a first campaign against Israel making Hoshea his

vassal and that later he deposed him on the basis of the suspicion or evi-dence of a double entente with a king of Egypt named Socircsup1⁴ and the refusalto pay tribute to Assyria possibly deporting him to be heard of no more and

‒ that Sargon was in point of fact the actual conqueror of Samaria and theauthor of the mass deportations to ldquoHalah the Habor ndashthe river of Gozanndashand the cities of the Medesrdquo which find a parallel in Sargonrsquos inscriptionswith his flaunting in the Nimrud prism of having removed 27280 people toAssyria from the district of Samaria during his campaign to the west in 720BCsup1⁵ Now a small number of Neo-Assyrian texts discovered in sites of theformer Northern Kingdom and along the Via Maris have been analyzed asevidence of an Assyrian counter-deportation to Palestine (possibly fromBabylonia) again attributed to Sargonsup1⁶

As for the major stumbling-block of the three-year long siege of the city men-tioned in 2Kgs 175 I have for some time now followed Andreas Fuchsrsquo usefulcritical position on the extreme difficulty which Assyrian armies would have

Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)rdquo Bib 71(1990) 206ndash25 On the identity of the Egyptian king called Socirc (swrsquo) I recall the studies by Duane L Chris-tensen ldquoThe Identity of lsquoKing Sorsquo in Egypt (2 Kings XVII 4)rdquo VT 39 (1989) 140ndash53 (Tefnakht I ofSais) Alberto RW Green ldquoThe Identity of King So of Egypt an Alternative Interpretationrdquo JNES52 (1993) 99ndash 108 (Piankhy Piye of Kush) while others think of Osorkon IV of Tanis See RobertMorkotrsquos chapter in this volume Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (Goumlttingen Cuvillier 1994) 196ndash97344 Display Inscription ll 23ndash24 ldquoI fought with them (the Samarians) and I counted as spoil27280 people who lived therein with their chariots and the Gods of their trust Fifty chariots formy royal bodyguard I mustered from among them and the rest of them I settled in the midst ofAssyria The city of Samaria I resettled and made it greater than before People of the lands con-quered by my own hands I brought there My courtier I placed over them as a governor and Icounted them with Assyriansrdquo Nadav Narsquoaman and Ran Zadok ldquoAssyrian Deportations to the Province of Samerina in theLight of Two Cuneiform Tablets from Tel Hadidrdquo TA 27 (2000) 159ndash88 For the deportationsunder Sargon see already Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoPopulation Changes in Palestine following AssyrianDeportationsrdquo TA 20 (1993) 104ndash24

Why Israel 93

had in undertaking an extensive siege of major fortified cities located at greatdistances from their homeland much preferring to plunder the myriad of smallersites around and to ravage the mainstay of their enemies the rural environ-mentsup1⁷

In the past few years I applied this approach to the problem of Sennacheribrsquosalleged siege of Jerusalemsup1⁸ where ndash following an interesting intuition by DavideNadali on the meaning of the Assyrian expression ldquoto shut the enemy up like abird in a cagerdquosup1⁹ ndash one may rather posit a blockade of fortresses which isolatedthe besieged city within a confined area opportunely made barren of all resour-ces by the Assyrians awaiting ndash in total isolation from any possible help ndash forfamine to take its toll thus causing Hezekiahrsquos surrender

This overall perspective with its obvious advantages for the assailants interms of extensive duration and reduced human losses vis-agrave-vis a more uncer-tain operation of actual siege beneath the walls of a major city (as we nowcan more clearly gauge from Ephʿalrsquos precious monograph on the subject)sup2⁰has long had support among Assyriologists and some archaeologistssup2sup1 Howeverother scholars still seem reluctant to abandon the traditional image of a veritablesiege of Jerusalem thus disregarding the vastness of the site (at least 60 hec-tares) and the obviously incomparable complexity of a possible siege-operationlike the one actually enacted by Sennacherib at the site of Lachish which de-spite its relatively manageable size (20 to 30 hectares) forced the Assyrians tobuild a tall and vast siege-ramp under the pressure of unceasing enemy artillery

In the case under examination we should also take account of the fact thatthe archaeologically recorded destruction levels at Samaria attributable to this

Andreas Fuchs ldquoUumlber den Wert von Befestigungsanlagenrdquo ZA 98 (2008) 45ndash99 Frederick Mario Fales ldquoThe Road to Judah 701 BCE in the Context of Sennacheribrsquos Political-Military Strategyrdquo in Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem Story History and Historiography edIsaac Kalimi and Seth Richardson (Leiden Brill 2014) 223ndash48 Davide Nadali ldquoSieges and Similes of Sieges in the Royal Annals the Conquest of Damascusby Tiglath-pileser IIIrdquo KASKAL 6 (2009) 137ndash49 esp 139 One may even wonder whether theexpression in 2Kgs 174 אלכתיבוהרסאיורושאךלמוהרצעיו did not originally refer to a situationof the same sort and whether it was later substituted by the contents of the next verse Israel Ephʿal The City Besieged Siege and Its Manifestations in the Ancient Near East (Lei-den Brill 2009) Cf eg most recently Nazek Khalid Matty Sennacheribrsquos Campaign Against Judah and Jeru-salem in 701 BC A Historical Reconstruction (Berlin de Gruyter 2016) esp 95ndash 114 where theprevious suggestions by Walter MayerWilliam R Gallagher and David Ussishkin on the solutionof a blockade for Jerusalem are presented and Nadalirsquos hypothesis regarding Damascus is ac-cepted ndash yielding a sum total of 9 cases of Assyrian blockades in all geographical scenarios be-tween the late 8th and the late 7th centuries BCE


phase are of quite limited character and that they do not seem to have affectedthe interior of the city thus making a wholesale destruction of the site rather im-probablesup2sup2 this point may be considered together with the fact that Sargon no-where states that he has destroyed Samaria but in fact claims to have fully re-settled the city and ldquomade it greater than beforerdquosup2sup3 Thus the traditional viewof a double-armed conquest of Samaria by Shalmaneser V and then again bySargon such as Tadmor and many others after him formulated is open tomany doubts

Of course if one wishes to keep to the fore the laconic passage in the Bab-ylonian Chronicle referring to the ldquoravagerdquo of Samariasup2⁴ and to further integrateldquoSamariardquo as the locale of royal activity in the fragmentary Assyrian Eponym Listfor the years 725ndash723 BCEsup2⁵ it remains possible that it was the army of Shalma-neser V which in fact engaged in a long-lasting military operation against Sama-ria for the last three years of this rulerrsquos reign and that a reprise of the blockadeunder Sargon clinched the operation itself If so the three-year siege recorded in2Kgs 175 although not resulting per se in the conquest of Samaria would ndashwhatever its actual degree of exactitude or even of likelihood ndash be aptly placedwithin the Biblical narrative as an operational element logically antecedent tothe fall of the city

As noted by many authors eg Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria VolumeII the Eighth Century BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2001) 562ndash63 and see already Narsquoa-man ldquoThe Historical Backgroundrdquo 220 ldquoIt is not clear whether Samaria was severely damagedin the course of its conquest the scanty archaeological evidence hardly supports the claim ofoverall destruction We may rather assume a continuity of urban life and rapid reconstructionof the city under the Assyrians when Samaria became the capital of the province of Samerinardquo Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 88 314 Annals l 16 Cf Jean-Jacques Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles trans Benjamin R Foster (Atlanta GAScholars Press 2004) 194ndash95 l 28 ldquoOn the twenty-fifth day of the month of Tebet Shalmaneser(V) ascended the throne in Assyria ltand Akkadgt He ravaged Samaria (URUSa-maba-ra-rsquo-in)rdquoOn the toponym cf Brad E Kelle ldquoWhatrsquos in a Name Neo-Assyrian Designations for the North-ern Kingdom and Their Implications for Israelite History and Biblical Interpretationrdquo JBL 121(2002) 639ndash66 esp 662 and Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoDid Shalmaneser V Conquer the City of SamariaAn Investigation into the maba-sign in Chronicle 1rdquo Or 80 (2011) 423ndash38 (whose collation con-firmed the reading ma) Alan R Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-Assyr-ian Text Corpus Project 1994) 59

Why Israel 95

4 The Importance of the Conquest of Israelfor the Assyrian Empire

This said we may move to the actual problem of why it was important for Sargonto subjugate Samaria ndash with the mention of this subjugation being repeated withrelish throughout his annalistic and recapitulative official inscriptionssup2⁶ Pro-ceeding from the position that there is no single main strategic reason to befound in the texts I would like to take a double view of the matter by pointingout first what Assyria stood to gain immediately in the area around Samaria it-self by making the city the capital of a new province and secondly what longer-term and wider-ranging perspectives were opened by the fall of the NorthernKingdom

As recalled by various authors the earlier evidence of the Samaria ostracasup2⁷points to a flourishing production of olive oil and wine in the smaller sitesaround the capital of the Northern Kingdom As Finkelstein puts it ldquoThe ostracarefer to types of oil and wine names of places and regions around the capitaland names of officials Regardless of whether they represent shipments ofolive oil and wine to the capital or another kind of interaction between the cap-ital and countryside estatestowns they certainly attest to a large-scale oil andwine lsquoindustryrsquo at that timerdquo This picture is supported by small-size excavationsand surveys performed in the area around the citysup2⁸

But the Northern Kingdom was also a gateway to the growing phenomenonof Eastern Mediterranean trade as eg shown by the coastal sites of Atlit andespecially Dor with their multiple elements of archaeological information on so-phisticated trade networks which involved the entire Mediterranean area fromPhoenicia to Egypt touching various ports in Palestine One of the hallmarksin material culture for these networks is represented by the so-called ldquotorpedordquostorage jar of remarkably standard shape and volume found ldquoin dozens of ex-cavated sites in Lebanon and Israel mainly along the coast (eg Sarepta and

Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 457ndash58 Cf eg Ivan T Kaufman ldquoThe Samaria Ostraca An Early Witness to Hebrew WritingrdquoBA 45 (1982) 229ndash39 who posited a date of at least thirty years before the fall of the citywhile the more recent analysis by Hermann M Niemann ldquoA New Look at the Samaria OstracaThe King-Clan Relationshiprdquo TA 35 (2008) 249ndash66 esp 264 based on the breakdown of polit-ical power relations within the Northern Kingdom between the royal residence and tribalclanelites yields an early 8th century BCE dating Israel Finkelstein The Forgotten Kingdom The Archaeology and History of Northern IsraelAtlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2013 132


Tyre) but also in inland sites located along trade routes (such as Hazor and Me-giddo)rdquosup2⁹ Moreover the well-known archaeological evidence from shipwrecks ofldquorounded and beamyrdquo freighters laden with prize wines retrieved off the coastof Ashkelonsup3⁰ indicates the presence of various hundreds of such jars in intactcondition which petrographic analysis showed to come from the Phoeniciancoast with wine as their content presumably destined to Egyptian buyers Thepotential interest of the Assyrians for profits deriving from this ndash presumablywell-established and thriving ndash commercial activity may be gauged ex postfrom the meticulous and tight-reined provisions regarding naval commerce al-ready present in the letter of Qurdi-Aššur-lamur quoted above and enforcedon a larger scale by Esarhaddon on the Tyrian king Barsquoalu in 676 BCEsup3sup1

A third aspect regards the extreme interest which the Assyrians demonstrateto have had concerning horses with one of their favorite breeds represented bythe equids called Kusāyu ie ldquoNubianrdquosup3sup2 Undoubtedly by Sargonrsquos time whenthe demand for steeds to be employed both for the ever-growing war effort (egin Babylonia and the Zagros) as well as for the massive building operations atDur-Šarruken grew exponentially horses came to be bred within the confines ofAssyria itselfsup3sup3 But certainly a letter like the following one shows that the Levantwas one of the two gateways (the other being the Zagros mountains) throughwhich this crucial technological ldquoproductrdquo found its way to Assyria

ldquoI have received 45 horses for the countrysup3⁴ The emissaries (LUacuteMAḪ MEŠ) from the landsof Egypt (KURMu-ṣur-a-a) Gaza (KURHa-za-ta-a-a) Judah (KURIa-uacute-du-a-a) Moab

Israel Finkelstein Elena Zapassky Yuval Gadot Daniel M Master Lawrence E Stager andItzhak Benenson ldquoPhoenician lsquoTorpedorsquo Amphoras and Egypt Standardization of VolumeBased on Linear Dimensionsrdquo AeL 21 (2011) 249 R D Ballard Lawrence E Stager Daniel Master Dana Yoerger David Mindell Louis LWhit-comb Hanumant Singh and Dennis Piechota ldquoIron Age Shipwrecks in Deep Water off AshkelonIsraelrdquo AJA 106 (2002) 151ndash68 See now Frederick Mario Fales ldquoPhoenicia in the Neo-Assyrian Period an Updated Over-viewrdquo SAAB 23 (2017) 181ndash295 For the treaty see in particular 241ndash243 Lisa Heidorn ldquoThe Horses of Kushrdquo JNES 56 (1997) 105ndash 14 Horses of Egyptian origin areattested also in the Bible cf Nadav Narsquoaman Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors Interactionand Counteraction Collected Essays vol 1 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2005) 7 on 1Kgs 1028 Cf Frederick Mario Fales ldquoEthnicity in the Assyrian Empire a View from the Nisbe (I) For-eigners and lsquoSpecialrsquo Inner Communitiesrdquo in Literature as Politics Politics as Literature Essayson the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist ed David SVanderhooft and Abraham Wi-nitzer (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2013) 37ndash74 esp 63 The formula ša KUR is often opposed to ša KASKAL ldquofor the campaignrdquo and indicates thatthese horses were destined for use other than combat but it is unclear whether such a subdi-vision was established already at the time of the request provision or whether it arose from

Why Israel 97

(KURMa-ʾa-ba-a-a) and of the ldquosons of Ammonrdquo (KURBa-anndashAm-ma-na-a-a) enteredKalhu on the 12th their tributes in hand A (further) 24 horses of (the emissary) of Gaza(KURHa-za-ta-a-a) were (also) availablerdquosup3⁵

Again quoting Finkelstein ldquobefore Assyria established direct contacts with Egyptin the late 8th century BCE Israel was the source of these horses which werebrought from Egypt bred and raised at Megiddo and then sold to Assyria andother kingdoms in the northrdquo Finkelstein bases this judgment on the analysisof the layout of Megiddo in the 8th century BCE which should vindicate the de-scription by Chicago archaeologists of the pillared buildings with unified plan inthe newly reestablished urban plan as devoted to the stabling of horsessup3⁶ But ofcourse as shown by the above letter ndash to be dated after the fall of Samaria ndashthere was a veritable ldquorushrdquo on the part of many polities in the area for the ap-propriation of the Nubian horse breed and its redistribution (as commerce or inthis case ceremonial gifts) to Assyria

And finallywe have men As shown by Stephanie Dalleysup3⁷ the Nimrud HorseLists from the reign of Sargon show the presence of a unit made of top equestrianofficers from Samaria and it is the only unit from outside Assyria proper that isknown as a national unit under its own city name Already in his royal inscrip-tions Sargon stated ndash with an unusual point of detail ndash that he had singled out aspecialized military corps from among the Samarian deportees to Assyrialdquo200 chariots for my royal bodyguard I mustered from among themrdquo Dalleyalso noted that already in 853 BCE at the battle of Qarqar Ahab of Israel hadbrought solely his chariotry to face Shalmaneser IIIrsquos invasion and thus suggest-ed that ndash at a distance of some 130 years ndash chariotry could have been a tradition-al military technique that was still practiced in Samaria with particular skill

Now for the second and final point What longer-term perspectives wereopened for the Assyrians by the fall of the Northern Kingdom My answer tothis question is simple although I hope not viewable as simplistic the fall ofSamaria removed a possible obstacle for the Assyrian king to make his way tothe southern sector of the veritable ldquoisthmusrdquo of territory of Palestine whichreached the border with Egypt With Samaria out of the way as an independentpolitical entity Sargonrsquos action was quick and relentless after his victory over

a decision by the Assyrian receiving authority (eg on the basis of the horsesrsquo type or physicalconditions) Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part I no 110 Finkelstein The Forgotten Kingdom 133ndash35 Stephanie Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sar-gon IIrdquo Iraq 47 (1985) 31ndash48 See also Karen Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume


Hamath and its allies (720 BCE) the Assyrian ruler led his troops towards Phil-istia and his successive actions were marked by a drive to solidly establish As-syrian rule in the southernmost Levant Such actions comprised the repression ofrebellious cities and keeping neighboring nomadic Northern Arabian tribes atbay but especially ndash agreeing with another assertion by Narsquoaman ndash ldquopushingthe Egyptians back to their homeland with the intervening expanses of Sinaipreventing any immediate threat to the Assyrian holdings in Philistiardquosup3⁸ Howev-er in the very same breath that the ldquoclear and present dangerrdquo of Egyptianarmed thrusts to the Levant was to be countered Sargonrsquos grand strategy foresawthe advantage and actually the necessity of keeping the flow of commerce withEgypt open and fluid for this reason he could state with pride in the sameNimrud prism inscription that ldquoI opened the sealed h[ar]bour (k[a]-a-ri) ofEgypt mingled Assyrians and Egyptians together and made them trade witheach otherrdquosup3⁹

Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Brook of Egypt and Assyrian Policy on the Border of Egyptrdquo TA 6(1979) 83 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 88 314 Annals ll 17ndash 18

Why Israel 99

Karen Radner

The ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo in the Contextof the Resettlement Programme of theAssyrian Empire

1 Introduction

This paper deals with the ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo the people removed by the As-syrian authorities from the territories of the conquered kingdom of Israel andespecially its capital city Samaria (Assyrian Samerina) to be resettled elsewherein the Empirersquos vast holdings

For the Assyrian Empire such a procedure was routine During the imperialperiod from the 9th to the 7th century BCE an extensive centrally directed reset-tlement programme saw population groups from all corners of the enormousgeographical area under Assyrian control being moved across great distancesto be settled within the provinces making up the ldquoland of Aššurrdquo Populationswithin the boundaries of the Empire were relocated replacing and being re-placed by people who were themselves moved in complex circular movementsthat were carefully planned and executed over the course of several years Pop-ulations taken from outside the provincial system however were not replaced

Assuming that the 43 cases where numbers are given in the Assyrian royalinscriptions are a representative sample of the 157 cases of mass resettlement at-tested in the period from the 9th to the mid-7th century it has been calculated thatthese instances resulted in the relocation of 4400000 plusmn 900000 peoplesup1 ndash a gi-gantic figure especially in a world whose population was a small fraction of to-dayrsquos Even if one has qualms about accepting the figures given in the Assyrianroyal inscriptions as accuratesup2 it is clear that from the viewpoint of the crownresettling people across the Empire was a mass effort meant to affect all landsunder Assyrian rule

Today the Assyrian strategy of mass resettlement is often described with theloaded term ldquodeportationrdquo and the people affected are called ldquodeporteesrdquo ndash mostprominently in the title of Bustenay Odedrsquos important monograph Mass Deporta-

Bustenay Oded Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (WiesbadenHarrassowitz 1979) 19ndash21 with fn 5 Cf Marco De Odorico The Use of Numbers and Quantifications in the Assyrian Royal Inscrip-tions (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1995)

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-006

tions and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire To a certain extent the use ofthese terms is misleading given the strong associations with concepts such asmarginalisation and extermination that are simply not applicable The Assyriankings used the phrases ldquoto count among the people of the land of Aššurrdquo and ldquototurn into a part of the land of Aššurrdquo in their inscriptions when referring to theintegration of people and territoriessup3 The explicit goal was the creation of an in-tegrated economically highly developed culture and society of ldquoAssyriansrdquo nolonger seen as an ethnic label ldquoAssyrianrdquo was from the 9th century onwards adesignation referring to all the kingrsquos subjects regardless of their origins⁴

People were chosen for resettlement in a considered selection process oftenin the aftermath of warfare that had reduced their original home to ruins Howexactly the Assyrian authorities handled the selection is unclear although pal-ace decorations from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (r 744ndash727 BCE) onwards il-lustrate proceedings by showing usually in the context of the capture of enemycities pairs of scribes⁵ logging people as well as booty Very few administrativerecords of the Assyrian Empire have survived despite the fact that these wereoriginally written in duplicate in Assyrian cuneiform and Aramaic alphabetscript⁶ Alas the preferred writing material of the Assyrian administration waswax-covered wooden writing boards which allowed much more text to be re-corded than the more durable clay tablets and like the leather scrolls used forAramaic these did not endure the ravages of time⁷ The fragmentary recordsthat have survived are hard to interpret also due to the innate terseness ofthis internal documentation Frederick Mario Fales and John Nicholas Postgatehave interpreted various texts from Nineveh as lists of ldquodeportees and displacedpersonsrdquo⁸ but what stage in the lengthy process of relocation they preciselydocument is difficult to assess As Fales and Postgate state these are lists of in-

As discussed by Oded Mass Deportations 81ndash91 Cf Peter Machinist ldquoAssyrians on Assyria in the First Millennium BCrdquo in Anfaumlnge politischenDenkens in der Antike die nahoumlstlichen Kulturen und die Griechen ed Kurt Raaflaub (MunichOldenbourg 1993) 77ndash 104 John M Russell Sennacheribrsquos Palace without Rival at Nineveh (Chicago London ChicagoUniversity Press 1991) 28ndash31 with list of attestations in fn 36 Eg Karen Radner ldquoSchreiberkonventionen im assyrischen Reich Sprachen und Schriftsys-temerdquo in Assur Gott Stadt und Land ed Johannes Renger (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2011)388 Frederick Mario Fales and John Nicholas Postgate Imperial Administrative Records Part I Pal-ace and Temple Administration (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 1992) XIII Frederick Mario Fales and John Nicholas Postgate Imperial Administrative Records Part IIProvincial and Military Administration (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 1995) nos 144ndash99

102 Karen Radner

dividuals ldquoreduced to a sea of namesrdquo⁹ lacking the context that might help us toharness them for our present purposes However it emerges unequivocally thatprofessions and family ties were of key interest to the compilers of this data

Whenever the Assyrian sources specify who was to be relocated they namethe urban elites craftsmen scholars and military men The very best example isthe summary of the people taken away from the Egyptian city of Memphis afterits capture in 671 BCE according to an inscription of Esarhaddon (r 680ndash669BCE)

ldquoThe seed of his fatherrsquos house descendants of earlier kings [hellip] of his houselsquoThird Menrsquo (of chariot crews) charioteers [hellip] rein-holders archers shield bearers[hellip] incantation priests dream interpreters (ḫarṭibē) [hellip] veterinarians Egyptian scribes[hellip] snake-charmers together with their helpers kāṣiru-craftsmen singers bakers[cooks] brewers (together with) their suppliers [hellip clothes] menders hunters leatherworkers [hellip] wheelwrights shipwrights [hellip] iron-smiths [hellip]rdquosup1⁰

Although fragmentarily persevered the order of the list is clear enough it beginswith the members of the royal family followed by professional soldiers and thena wide range of highly trained experts as well as their support personnel Odedsup1sup1calculated that 85 of the documented cases of resettlement concern peoplethat were transplanted to Central Assyria the area between the cities Assur inthe south Nineveh in the north and Arbela in the east Indeed some of theEgyptian specialists mentioned in the inscription appear shortly after at Esar-haddonrsquos court in Nineveh three dream interpreters (ḫarṭibē) three Egyptianscribes and a physician (certainly a profession originally mentioned in the enu-meration of the royal inscription) with an Egyptian name appear in a roster thatidentifies the scholars in the royal entouragesup1sup2 In addition private legal textsfeaturing Egyptians and even entire archives of Egyptian families have been

Fales and Postgate Imperial Administrative Records Part II XXX Erle Leichty The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon King of Assyria (680ndash669 BC) (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) no 9 irsquo 6rsquondash 17rsquo Oded Mass Deportations 28 Fales and Postgate Imperial Administrative Records Part I no 1 ii 15 (physician Ṣihuru) revi 12ndash ii 7 (dream interpreters [A]guršicirc Rarsquoši and Ṣihucirc Egyptian scribes Huru Nimmurau and[Hu]ruaṣu) photograph httpcdliuclaeduP335693 (accessed 102017) Discussed by KarenRadner ldquoThe Assyrian King and His Scholars The Syro-Anatolian and the Egyptian Schoolsrdquoin Of God(s) Trees Kings and Scholars Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Par-pola ed Mikko Luukko Saana Svaumlrd and Raija Mattila (Helsinki Finnish Oriental Society2009) 222ndash26


found in Nineveh and Assur demonstrating the presence of populations fromthe Nile in the cities of Assyrian heartland (Fig 1)sup1sup3

The specialists from conquered regions such as the Egyptian experts wereto generate knowledge and wealth and to contribute to the economic and cultur-al development of the EmpireWhen the topic of resettlement is discussed in theroyal inscriptions they either employ a vocabulary of violence and pillage fit-tingly for the context of war or else the language of horticulture which likensthe deportees to precious trees that are uprooted and replanted in the best pos-sible circumstances by that most conscientious of gardeners the king of Assy-

Nineveh Raija Mattila Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh Part II AssurbanipalThrough Sin-šarru-iškun (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 2002) nos 426ndash56 especiallynos 435 and 442 (private archive found near the Šamaš Gate) Assur Betina Faist Alltagstexteaus neuassyrischen Archiven und Bibliotheken der Stadt Assur (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2007)nos 78ndash 101 114 (ldquoArchive N31rdquo) Karen Radner ldquoDie beiden neuassyrischen Privatarchiverdquo inAusgrabungen in Assur Wohnquartiere in der Weststadt Teil 1 ed Peter A Miglus Karen Radnerand Franciszek M Stepniowski (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2016) 121ndash26 (ldquoArchive N52brdquo)

Fig 1 The deportees taken from Memphis in 671 BCE were relocated in Central Assyria and canbe traced in particular in Nineveh and Assur The black line indicates the extent of the Assyrianprovincial system whose areas were under direct Assyrian control in the year 670 BCE AsMemphis was beyond the provincial system the authorities did not aim to replace the depletedpopulation of the city Map prepared by Andrea Squitieri after a draft of the author

104 Karen Radner

riasup1⁴ just like the gardener transfers valuable plants to a nurturing new environ-ment that they in turn will enhance the wise ruler allocated his people wherethey best benefitted the Empire In the case of carefully selected specialiststhe Assyrian crown clearly regarded their resettlement as a privilege and an in-dication of high esteem But the transplantation of people was certainly alsoused as a means of punishment as we shall see below

In general the people selected for resettlement were moved together withtheir families and their possessions and the authoritiesrsquo key objective was clear-ly to keep them healthy and well supplied during their treksup1⁵ But the resettle-ment programme of course brutally divided existing communities according tothe needs of the Empire ndash into those who had to leave and those who were al-lowed to stay or conversely into those who were allowed to leave and thosewho had to stay This was a highly effective way of minimising the risk of rebel-lion against the central authority

In the following we will discuss resettlement from and to Samaria analy-sing one of several overlapping cycles for transportation in detail before weturn to the Assyrian archival texts as a source for the fate of some of the peoplethat were made to leave Samaria Some of this material has long been connectedto the ldquoLost Tribesrdquo but other texts ndash in particular a letter concerning Samariansin Dur-Šarruken the new capital city of Sargon II (r 721ndash705 BCE) and a salecontract originally from Guzana ndash have not yet been considered in this context

2 The Inhabitants of Samaria Old and NewWhere to and Whence from

According to the testimony of 2Kgs 17 (Fig 2) inhabitants of Samaria were movedto Halahhu the region around Sargonrsquos new capital city of Dur-Šarruken in Cen-tral Assyriasup1⁶ Guzana (Tell Halaf on the border between Turkey and Syria)sup1⁷ on

Karen Radner ldquoHow Did the Neo-Assyrian King Perceive His Land and Its Resourcesrdquo inRainfall and Agriculture in Northern Mesopotamia ed Remko M Jas (Leiden Nederlands Insti-tuut voor het Nabije Oosten 2000) 233ndash46 Karen Radner ldquoEconomy Society and Daily Life in the Neo-Assyrian Periodrdquo in A Compan-ion to Assyria ed Eckart Frahm (Wiley Malden MA 2017) 210ndash 11 Karen Radner ldquoProvinz C Assyrienrdquo in RlA 11 ed Michael P Streck (2008) 54 Ariel BaggDie Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 2 Zentralassyrien und benachbarteGebiete Aumlgypten und die arabische Halbinsel (Wiesbaden Reichert 2017) 194ndash95 Radner ldquoProvinzrdquo 51 Bagg Die Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 2187ndash89


the Khabur River a tributary of the Euphrates which joins that river near Deir ez-Zor and the towns of the Medes In turn people from Northern Babylonianamely Babylon Kuthah Cutha (Tell Ibrahim) and Sepharvaim most probablythe twin cities of Sipparsup1⁸ from Hamathsup1⁹ in western Syria and from the uniden-tified city of Avvasup2⁰ were settled in Samaria and its towns

ldquoIn the 9th year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelitesto Assyria He settled them in Halah in Gozan on the Habor River and in the towns of theMedesrdquo (2Kgs 176 translation New International Version)ldquoThe king of Assyria brought people from Babylon Kuthah Avva Hamath and Sepharvaimand settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites They took over Samariaand lived in its townsrdquo (2Kgs 1724 translation New International Version)

As we shall see below Assyrian archival sources firmly support the identificationof Halah = Assyrian Halahhu and Gozan = Assyrian Guzana as a destination forpeople resettled from Samaria At present there is no explicit mention of Samar-ians in the provinces established in 716 BCE in Median territory but there are

Namely Sippar-Yahrurum (Tell Abu Habbah) and Sippar-Amnanum (Tell ed-Der) see Her-mann Gasche and Caroline Janssen ldquoSipparrdquo in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology inthe Ancient Near East 5 ed Eric M Meyers (Oxford Oxford University Press 1997) 47ndash49 Analternative interpretation for SPRWYYM that however still places the site in Babylonia was sug-gested by Ran Zadok ldquoGeographical and Onomastic Notesrdquo Journal of the Ancient Near EasternSociety 8 (1976) 115ndash16 who connected this place name with the city of Ša-barecirc (URUŠaacutendashbar-re-e) one of 39 fortified cities of the land of the Bit-Amukani that Sennacherib captured in 703 BCEAlbert Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria(704ndash681 BC) Part 1 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2012) no 1 45 Kirk Grayson and JamieNovotny The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681 BC) Part 2 (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2014) no 213 44 Ariel Bagg Die Orts- und Gewaumlssernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit Teil 1 Die Levante (Wies-baden Reichert 2008) 87ndash91 As far as I can see there are two toponyms in the Assyrian sources from the late 8th centuryBCE that could arguably match the name given in the Bible (1) A city called Abacirc in the UpperTigris region near modern Diyarbakır is attested in a letter from an Assyrian official to Sargon IIthat mentions ldquothese people from Abacircrdquo (UNMEŠ an-nu-te URUA-ba-a-a) and the ldquopass of [Ab]acircrdquo(neacute-ri-bi [URUA-ba]-a) Giovanni B Lanfranchi and Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sar-gon II Part II Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces (Helsinki Helsinki UniversityPress 1990) no 24 7 14ndash 15 photograph httpcdliuclaeduP334350 (accessed 102017) Wedo not know about deportations from that particular region during the time of Sargon II(2) A city called Amacirc (URUA-ma-a) on the Uqnu branch of the Tigris in Gambulu in eastern Bab-ylonia that is mentioned in the very fitting context of Sargonrsquos conquest of Babylonia in his Dur-Šarruken Annals line 292 Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (GoumlttingenCuvillier Verlag 1994) 149 330 On the latter see also Zadok Journal of the Ancient Near EasternSociety 8 (1976) 120ndash21

106 Karen Radner

very limited archival sources available for this part of the Empire and none dis-covered locallysup2sup1

Fig 2 According to the Book of Kings the destinations of the people removed from Samaria are(marked with a circle symbol) Dur-Šarruken in the Halahhu region in the northern part of theroughly triangular Assyrian core region Guzana on the Khabur river and the ldquotowns of theMedesrdquo with the provincial centres Kišessim and Harhar The places of origins of the peopleresettled in Samaria are (marked with a diamond symbol) the Northern Babylonian citiesBabylon Cutha and Sippar and Hamath in western Syria the location of Avva is presentlyuncertain The black line indicates the extent of the Assyrian provincial system whose areaswere under direct Assyrian control in the year 708 BCE Map prepared by Andrea Squitieri after adraft of the author

On the one hand there is the correspondence of the Assyrian officials appointed by Sargon IIto administrate the new province of Kar-Šarruken = Harhar written in the period after it was es-tablished 716 BCE in Median territory Andreas Fuchs and Simo Parpola The Correspondence ofSargon II Part III Letters from Babylonia and the Eastern Provinces (Helsinki Helsinki UniversityPress 2001) nos 83ndash 110 none of the letters refer explicitly to deportee populations In addi-tion there is one private legal text from 715 BCE (Faist Alltagstexte no 15) that documentsthe sale of a garden in Kar-Nabucirc the new Assyrian designation for Kis eslu an Assyrian-control-led settlement in the province of Harhar This sale contract was unearthed in Assur but as dis-cussed by Karen Radner ldquoAssyria and the Medesrdquo in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran edDaniel T Potts (New York Oxford University Press 2013) 450 it was certainly written in WesternIran as not only the location of the garden but also the involvement of the following witnessessuggests who must have been present at Kar-Nabucirc while the Assyrian army was active there


The Assyrian sources allow us to a certain extent to recreate the geographyand chronology of the complex and protracted arrangements required to relocatethe people of Samaria and to replace them in their former home The resettle-ment of Samaria took at the very least eight years and possibly even longerOne region from where population groups were taken to Samaria was affectedby Assyrian military action only in 715 BCE Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Annals men-tion the transplantation of members of different Arab tribes (namely TamudiIbadidi Marsimani and Hayapacirc) to the city of Samaria in that yearsup2sup2 This infor-mation highlights also that the data given in the Book of Kings is not exhaustiveas no mention is made there of Arabs being settled in Samaria The territoriesfrom where these Arab population groups were taken were not incorporatedinto the Assyrian provincial system and as the Assyrian authorities only ever ex-changed populations within the areas that they controlled directly no one wasdispatched to replace the people taken from the Arabian Peninsula

Whether this is also the case for the Babylonian populations brought to Sa-maria depends on the chronology of their removal ndash before or after Babyloniaseceded from the Empire The region revolted during the murky circumstancesthat had brought Sargon to the throne and in 721 BCE the Chaldean leader Mar-duk-apla-iddina of Bit-Yakin was appointed King of Babylonsup2sup3 A first attempt toregain control in 720 BCE was unsuccessful with Sargonrsquos forces defeated at theBattle of Der and Babylonia was lost to the Empire for twelve years During thattime the Assyrian crown certainly would not have had the possibility nor theinclination to replenish its population In 710 BCE Sargon invaded again andeventually secured the Babylonian throne for himself It is probable althoughnot certain that the Northern Babylonian people settled in Samaria weretaken as a consequence of Sargonrsquos recapture of the region between 710 and708 BCE If this is accepted then people were still being relocated to Samariamore than a decade after the city had been conquered If one argues for an ear-

S amas-belu-uṣur identified in the text as an ldquoAssyrian magnaterdquo (and very probably the gover-nor of Arzuhina) Emuq-Ass ur the commander of Kar-Nabucirc the eunuch Tarditu-Aššur and Ibucirca horse trader (that is an agent in charge of procuring horses as part of Assyrian military activ-ity) Vendor is Emuq-Assurrsquos Third Man a member of the commanderrsquos chariot crew who is stat-ed to have received the garden as a gift from the commander himself No-one mentioned in thedocument including the remaining witnesses has any obvious Samarian connection Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Annals lines 120ndash3 edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 110320 Karen Radner ldquoRevolts in the Assyrian Empire Succession Wars Rebellions Against a FalseKing and Independence Movementsrdquo in Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World andthe Near East In the Crucible of Empire ed John J Collins and Joseph G Manning (Leiden Brill2016) 51

108 Karen Radner

lier date of the uprooting of the Babylonian groups then the relocation of theArabs in 715 BCE provides an end date

3 An Example of Circular Interchange Samaria ndashKišessim ndash Assur ndash Hamath ndash Samaria

The resettlement of Samaria and its people necessitated several overlapping cir-cular movements one of which can be reconstructed in full (Fig 3) It is the routelinking the towns of the Medes (in a region first conquered in 716 BCE) withAssur (where Medes are first attested in a text from 714 BCE) and Hamath(where Assyrians from the heartland were settled after their 720 BCE rebellionwas subdued) and finally Samaria (where people from Hamath were relocatedafter the crushing of their own insurgency in 720 BCE)

Fig 3 One of many contemporaneous circular interchanges of people being moved across theEmpire People from Samaria conquered in 722 BCE are moved to Kišessim one of the ldquotownsof the Medesrdquo first conquered in 716 BCE whose residents are brought to Assur in turn aftera revolt in 720 BCE insurgents from Assur and other places in the roughly triangular Assyriancore region are relocated to Hamath after a rebellion there had been quelled in 720 BC andpeople of Hamath are sent to Samaria The black line indicates the extent of the Assyrianprovincial system whose areas were under direct Assyrian control in the year 708 BCE Mapprepared by Andrea Squitieri after a draft of the author


Letrsquos start with the ldquotowns of the Medesrdquo In 716 BCE Sargon created twonew provinces in Median-controlled territory in the modern Iranian provinceof Hamadan their centres were Kišessim renamed Kar-Nergal (ldquoTrading quayof the god Nergalrdquo corresponding to the settlement mound of modern Najafeha-bad) and Harhar renamed Kar-Šarruken (ldquoSargonrsquos trading quayrdquo correspond-ing to Tepe Giyan)sup2⁴ Serious complications plagued the establishment of theseprovinces as Sargonrsquos correspondence with his officials highlights On the onehand the local Assyrian administration suffered from the effects of the unforgiv-ing weather conditions snow and cold slowed down building up the necessaryinfrastructuresup2⁵ and frequently cut off the new provinces from all communicationwith Central Assyriasup2⁶ On the other hand local insurgence was a pressing prob-lem already in 715 BCE the new provinces rose in rebellion on a scale that thelocal Assyrian officials were unable to contain and the imperial army had to re-turn in order to regain control Once subdued four of the most important Medianstrongholds were turned into Assyrian fortresses with new names assigned tothem that associated them with some of the most important Assyrian deities Ki-s es lu became Kar-Nabu and Qindau was renamed Kar-Sicircn while Anzaria was re-branded as Kar-Adad and Bit-Bagaia as Kar-Issarsup2⁷ These and the two provincialcentres are arguably the Book of Kingsrsquo ldquotowns of the Medesrdquo as the imperialresettlement programme now targeted these places 4820 persons were takenaway according to Sargonrsquos inscriptions and in addition 4000 enemy warriorslost their heads as the consequence of the 715 BCE rebellionsup2⁸ And yet the con-flict continued and the Assyrian army had to return twice more to assert the Em-pirersquos control The troubles subsided only after 713 BCE once a two-fold systemof power saw the Assyrian provincial administration cooperate with the localcity lords who were left in power under the proviso that they formally acceptedAssyrian sovereigntysup2⁹ It is only at that time that the region can be reasonablyassumed to become a viable destination for settlers brought in by the Assyriancrown ndash The distance from Samaria to Kišessim is about 1300 km as thecrow flies with the Syrian Desert and the Zagros mountain range in between

Radner ldquoAssyria and the Medesrdquo 444ndash47 Fuchs and Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part III nos 85 98 100 Eg Fuchs and Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part III no 83 Radner ldquoAssyria and the Medesrdquo 450 Dur-Šarruken Annals lines 109ndash 15 210ndash 11 Dur-Šarruken Display Inscription lines 64ndash65edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 108ndash109 319 Karen Radner ldquoAn Assyrian View on the Medesrdquo in Continuity of Empire () Assyria MediaPersia ed Giovanni B Lanfranchi Michael Roaf and Robert Rollinger (Padova sargon2003) 53ndash55

110 Karen Radner

Some of the people deported from the Median region were moved to the cityof Assur where people from Hundur the hinterland of Kis essim are attestedfrom the reign of Sargon II onward The first attestation occurs in a detailedand meticulously dated log of a series of events that took place in the Ešarra tem-ple at Assur in the year 714 BCE over a period of two days during the month ofṬebet An altar had been damaged when another heavy piece of temple furniturewas being moved and the report served to record in detail the steps taken to re-pair the damage to the sacred objects and to restore equilibrium to the fragiletemple atmosphere The repairs included some apparently specialised polishingwork undertaken by men from Hundursup3⁰ who must have been settled at somepoint before these events most likely as part of the group of 4820 peopletaken away from the new provinces in Iran in 715 BCE Hundureans are verywell attested in Assur in the 7th century BCE when the private archives foundin two adjoining buildings document the business affairs of an extended well-to-do family of Hundureans for the period from 681 BCE until the conquest ofAssur in 614 BCEsup3sup1 They can only be identified as the descendants of the erst-while deportees because even a century after their ancestors had arrived inAssur they still labelled themselves as ldquoHundureanrdquo (presumably as this hadnow taken on a professional meaning) but none of the people attested in thesetexts bear Iranian names ndash The distance from Kišessim to Assur is about500 km as the crow flies with the massive Zagros mountain range in between

Letrsquos turn to the next stop on our circular route through the Empire the cityof Hamath In the course of Sargon IIrsquos ascension to the throne he met with op-position in the core region including the city of Assur By 720 BCE he was ableto crush this resistance against his rule The inscription of a royal stele that oncestood in the city of Hamath describes how he treated his detractors Ever themerciful ruler he refrained from killing them and instead had them moved tothe war-torn city of Hamath this relocation is clearly meant to punish and cor-responds probably closest to our modern notions of a deportation

Simo Parpola Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Cor-pus Project 2017) no 55 17 KURHu-un-dir-a-a uacute-ṣip-pu ldquoThe Hundureans polished itrdquo Archives N9 and N10 Editions Frederick Mario Fales and Liane Jakob-Rost ldquoNeo-AssyrianTexts from Assur Private Archives in the Vorderasiatisches Museum of Berlin Part 1rdquo SAAB 5(1991) 3ndash 157 discussed by Kaisa Aringkerman ldquoThe lsquoAussenhaken Arearsquo in the City of Assur duringthe Second Half of the 7th Century BCrdquo SAAB 13 (1999ndash2001) 217ndash72 Radner ldquoAssyria and theMedesrdquo 447ndash49


ldquoI pardoned 6300 guilty Assyrians and had mercy on them I settled them in the city ofHamath I imposed on them taxes and tribute work obligations and conscription justlike my royal fathers had imposed on Irhulenu of Hamathrdquo sup3sup2

The western Syrian city of Hamath (modern Hama) is situated in the fertile Or-ontes valley It had been the capital of the eponymous kingdom whose most fa-mous ruler was Irhulenu a king of the 9th century BCE From 738 BCE onwardsTiglath-pileser III of Assyria invaded this kingdom and integrated it in two stagesinto the Assyrian Empire in 732 BCE Hamath became part of the newly estab-lished Assyrian province of Manṣuatesup3sup3 During the troubled times when the As-syrian crown passed under very unclear circumstances from Shalmaneser V(r 726ndash722 BCE) to Sargon II Hamath was the centre of a large-scale insurrec-tion The western territories including the cities Samaria and Damascus man-aged to break free from Assyrian control and rallied behind one Ilu-birsquodi(ldquoGod is behind merdquo alternatively written Yau-birsquodi ldquoYahweh is behind merdquo)This ldquoman of humble descentrdquo as Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Display Inscriptioncalls himsup3⁴ aimed to resurrect the ancient kingdom of Hamath with himselfas its king Sargon squashed these ambitions in 720 BCE captured and executedIlu-birsquodi and wrecked the city of Hamathsup3⁵ During this same tumultuous timeinhabitants of Central Assyria opposed Sargonrsquos rise to power and after thestruggle for control was decided in his favour they had to be removed fromthe Empirersquos power centre Deporting them to Hamath achieved this and byhelping to rebuild the ruined city they were meant to repay the mercy of theirking who had graciously refrained from executing them for their disloyalty ndashThe distance from Assur to Hamath is about 650 km as the crow flies

This brings us back to Samaria where according to the Book of Kings peo-ple from Hamath were settled to replace the deported Samarians It is unclearwhether this happened before or after Hamath supported the insurgence ofIlu-birsquodi both scenarios are possible although I find it more likely that the relo-cations were authorised by the Assyrian crown only in the aftermath of the de-feat of the rebels in 720 BCE The distance from Hamath to Samaria is about350 km as the crow flies

J David Hawkins ldquoThe New Sargon Stele from Hamardquo in From the Upper Sea to the LowerSea Studies in the History of Assyria and Babylonia in Honour of A K Grayson ed Grant Frame(Leiden Istanbul Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten 2004) 156-57 160 (Side B) Radner ldquoProvinzrdquo 62 no 54 66 Dur-Šarruken Display Inscription line 33 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 200ndash201 345 Radner ldquoRevolts in the Assyrian Empirerdquo 49ndash51

112 Karen Radner

We are fortunate in that the sources allow us to reconstruct this one com-plete cycle of many circular population exchanges that affected Samaria Thisone cycle saw people being moved in various stages over a decade between722 BCE and (at least) 713 BCE It highlights that within the regions of the pro-vincial system the Assyrian crown had no interest in creating empty spacesPopulations were replaced in complicated patterns that required a great dealof organisation and planning but as we have already stated above the meagresurviving administrative records do little to enlighten us about the specific per-sonnel and processes involved

4 Who Was Taken Away from Samaria

Letrsquos start again with the testimony of the Book of Kings

ldquoIt was reported to the king of Assyria lsquoThe people you deported and resettled in the townsof Samaria do not know what the god of that country requires helliprsquo Then the king of Assyriagave this order ldquoHave one of the priests (kohanim) you took captive from Samaria go backto live there and teach the people what the god of the land requiresrdquo (2Kgs 1726 27 trans-lation New International Version)

It identifies the kohanim the ldquopriestsrdquo as a group of people that had been re-moved from the towns of Samaria wholesale The Assyrian sources do not spe-cifically mention cultic experts from Samaria as deportees but they certainlyconfirm that the Assyrian crown had selected highly trained specialists for relo-cation elsewhere in the Empire Incidentally the Assyrian references support re-settlement of Samarians in two of the areas mentioned in the Book of Kings Ha-lahhu and Guzana in the Khabur valley

41 Samarian Chariot Troops Integrated into the AssyrianRoyal Forces

When discussing the relocation of the people of Samaria three inscriptions ofSargon II specifically mention the Samarian chariotry and its absorption intothe Assyrian armed forces The Display Inscription and the Annals from Sargonrsquospalace in Dur-Šarruken (Khorsabad) feature 50 gišGIGIRMEŠ while the inscrip-tion on a prism found at Kalhu list 2-me gišGIGIRMEŠ The apparent contradic-tion can be easily explained as the logogram gišGIGIR is used both for the chariot(narkabtu) and the men of the chariot crew (bēl narkabti) The Samarian chariot


corps fought with heavily armed chariots whose crew consisted of four meneach so that 200 chariot troops correspond to the crews of 50 chariots

(a) Sargonrsquos Kalhu Prism iv 31ndash41 (translation after Frahm in this volumeText 8)sup3⁶

ldquo27280 people together with [their] chariots and the gods in whom they trusted I counted[as] spoil I gathered from their midst 200 chariot (troop)s for my royal contingent The restof them I settled within Assyria I resettled Samaria making it more (populous) than be-fore I had people from (various) lands I had conquered enter into it One of my eunuchsI installed over them as a provincial governor and I counted them among the people ofAssyriardquo

(b) Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Annals lines 15ndash7 (translation after Frahm in this vol-ume Text 7)sup3⁷

ldquo[27280 of the people living in its (Samariarsquos) midst] I led away From [their midst I gath-ered together] fifty chariot (troop)s for my royal contingent [The rest of them I settled with-in Assyria] I resettled Samaria] making it more (populous) than before [I had] people from(various) lands I had conquered [enter it One of my eunuchs I installed over them as a pro-vincial governor] I imposed [tribute] and taxes upon them as (if they were) Assyriansrdquo

(c) Sargonrsquos Dur-Šarruken Display Inscription lines 23ndash25 (translation afterFrahm in this volume Text 9)sup3⁸

ldquo27280 (Variants 27290 24280) of the people living in its (Samariarsquos) midst I led awayFrom their midst I gathered together fifty chariots I let the rest take up their craftsagain I installed over them one of my eunuchs and imposed on them tribute (as under)a previous kingrdquo

The armies of the 8th century BCE knew two chariot typessup3⁹ The light versionwas drawn by two horses and manned by a three-man crew the chariot driveran archer as the fighter and the so-called ldquoThird Manrdquo who shielded the others⁴⁰The heavily armoured version was drawn by four horses and had a fourth crewmember who provided additional protection (Fig 4) These tank-like construc-

Edition Cyril J Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954) 173ndash98 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 87ndash88 313ndash 14 Edition Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 196ndash97 344 Robin Archer ldquoChariotry to Cavalry Developments in the Early First Millenniumrdquo in NewPerspectives on Ancient Warfare ed Garrett G Fagan and Matthew Trundle (Leiden Brill2010) 76 For the terminology see Karen Radner Die neuassyrischen Texte aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad (BerlinReimer 2002) 9ndash 10

114 Karen Radner

tions were much taller than the lighter models with wheel diameters of up to 2meters They were used to fire at enemy archers at close range and while theylacked in speed they very effectively served the twin purposes of show-of-forceand intimidation⁴sup1 The Samarian chariotry was of this second type

The integration of fighters from defeated armies into the permanent Assyrianforces was routine and always focused on chariotry and cavalry that is thoseunits with the most specialised training The Samarian chariotry was not merelyintegrated into the Assyrian army but specifically into the ldquoroyal contingentrdquo

Andreas Fuchs ldquoAssyria at War Strategy and Conductrdquo in The Oxford Handbook of Cunei-form Culture ed Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson (Oxford Oxford University Press 2011) 394

Fig 4 Tank-like chariot with a four-man crew consisting of driver archer and two shield-bearersDetail from the wall decoration of Assurbanipalrsquos palace at Nineveh Reproduced from T DezsoumlThe Assyrian Army 1 The Structure of the Neo-Assyrian Army 2 Cavalry and Chariotry (BudapestEoumltvoumls University Press 2012) pl 18 no 31 Used with the authorrsquos kind permission


(kiṣir šarrūti) of the armed forces that was under the direct command of theking⁴sup2

Some of the members of the Samarian chariotry are attested about a decadelater in an administrative text from Kalhu that matches groups of commanders ofchariot teams (rab urāte) with their superior officers The document may havebeen prepared in order to organise the armed forces that Sargon dispatchedagainst Babylonia as the text can be assigned to the period c 710ndash708 BCE⁴sup3A group of thirteen commanders is associated with the city of Samaria

ldquoIbba-dalacirc Dalacirc-ahiYāu-gacirc Atamru Ahi-idri Abdi-Milki Bel-duri Narmenacirc Gabbecirc SamarsquoAhi-idri Bahicirc Ahi-Yāu in total 13 (from) Samaria command of Nabucirc-belu-karsquorsquoinrdquo ⁴⁴

The chariot team commanders mostly bear names with a clear West Semitic ety-mology and two have names formed with the divine element Yahweh Yāu-gacircldquoYahweh is exaltedrdquo⁴⁵ and Ahi-Yāu ldquoMy brother is Yahwehrdquo⁴⁶

At about the same time in 709 BCE a private legal document found in Nine-veh⁴⁷ mentions a chariot driver called Nadbi-Yāu (ldquoImpelled by Yahwehrdquo⁴⁸) as awitness to a slave sale with Šumma-ilani a chariot driver of the royal contin-gent as the purchaser As Šumma-ilani was a chariot driver of the royal corpsit is therefore likely that also his witness Nadbi-Yāu was a member of this partof the Assyrian armed forces As we have seen the Samarian chariotry waspart of the royal contingent and several of its known members had Yahwehnames It therefore seems a reasonable hypothesis to identify also Nadbi-Yāuas one of the Samarian chariot corps

For a discussion of kiṣir šarrūti see Tamas Dezso The Assyrian Army II Recruitment and Lo-gistics (Budapest Eoumltvoumls University Press 2016) 16 Stephanie Dalley and John Nicholas Postgate Texts from Fort Shalmaneser (London BritishSchool of Archaeology in Iraq 1984) 176 Dalley and Postgate Texts from Fort Shalmaneser no 99 ii 16ndash23 Discussed by StephanieDalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon IIrdquo Iraq 47(1985) 31ndash48 Daniel Schwemer ldquoIāu-gacircrdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2I ed Heath-er D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2000) 497 Steven Cole ldquoAḫi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 1I ed Karen Rad-ner (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1998) 63 no 1 Theodore Kwasman and Simo Parpola Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of NinevehPart I Tiglath-Pileser III through Esarhaddon (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 1991) no 34rev 9 mNa-ad-bindashIa-a-uacute LUacuteDIBndashKUŠPAMEŠ Photograph httpcdliuclaeduP335181 (ac-cessed 102017) Kaisa Aringkerman ldquoNadbi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2II edHeather D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001) 915

116 Karen Radner

Finally ldquoThird Men from Samariardquo (3-šuacuteMEŠ KURSa-mir-na-a-a l 6)⁴⁹ are men-tioned alongside ldquoThird Men from Hattirdquo (3-šuacuteMEŠ KURHa-t[a]-a-a l 10) and vari-ous other military personnel including chariot fighters (ENminusgišGI[GIRMEŠ] l 5) aswell as scouts (UŠminuskib-siMEŠ l 1) and outriders (kal-la-pu ši-pir-te l 2) in a frag-mentary administrative text from Kalhu recording food expenditure We can cer-tainly assign these ldquoThird Men from Samariardquo to the Samarian chariot corps ofthe royal contingent formed by Sargon II

42 Samarian Artisans Participating in the Constructionof Dur-Šarruken

As we have already stated Sargonrsquos new capital Dur-Šarruken was constructed inthe Halahhu region of the Assyrian heartland A broken letter whose author isunknown because of the fragmentary state of the tablet is one of many itemsin Sargonrsquos correspondence with his governors and high officials that dealswith details concerning the construction of this new residence city the kingrsquospride and joy⁵⁰ This letter is of interest to us because it mentions Samarianswho were to contribute to these works These included carpenters and potters(or perhaps better ceramic artists as Dur-Šarrukenrsquos architectural decorationboasted elaborate ceramic features such as glazed brick panels⁵sup1) who were todirect the work of the other deportee workers The carpenters and potters are des-ignated as ummānu an Assyrian term used for ldquoexpert specialistrdquo that denotes amaster of any discipline that requires extensive training and knowhow

Stephanie Dalley and John Nicholas Postgate The Tablets from Fort Shalmaneser (LondonBritish School of Archaeology in Iraq 1984) no 121 6 They read 3 ŠUacuteMEŠ KURSa-mir-na-a-a and did not understand this and the parallel passage in l 10 wondering in their commentarywhether ŠUacuteMEŠ was a small measuring unit (Dalley and Postgate The Tablets from Fort Shal-maneser 238ndash39) they did not offer a translation of the fragmentary text Later Kyle LawsonYounger Jr ldquoThe Deportations of the Israelitesrdquo JBL 117 (1998) 221 assumed that ŠUacute wasused as a logogram for kalucirc and interpreted this as a reference to ldquothree Samarian lamenta-tion-priestsrdquo But given that the logogram ŠUacute is not at all used in the meaning kalucirc ldquolamenterrdquoin Neo-Assyrian archival texts and in view of the otherwise exclusive presence of military per-sonnel in our text this interpretation cannot be maintained Simo Parpola ldquoThe Construction of Dur-S arrukin in Assyrian Royal Correspondencerdquo inKhorsabad le palais de Sargon II roi drsquoAssyrie ed Annie Caubet (Paris Louvre 1995) 47ndash77 Eg on the faccedilade of Room 18 of the royal palace Gordon Loud and Charles B AltmanKhorsabad Part 2 The Citadel and the Town (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1938) 77David Kertai The Architecture of Late Assyrian Royal Palaces (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 2015) 120


ldquoWhat the king my lord wrote to me lsquoProvide all the Samarians ([LUacuteSa]-mir-i-na-a-a) inyour charge with work in Dur-Šarrukenrsquo ndash I subsequently sent word to the clan leaders(LUacutena-si-ka-a-ni) saying lsquoCollect all the carpenters and potters let them come and directthe deportees (LUacutehu-ub-te) who are in Dur-Šarrukenrsquo But they did not agree to send themSurely if I had sent [threatening] letters to the clan leaders saying lsquoIf indeed you do notsend me experts (LUacuteum-ma-ni) to work for me all the people who are here [will facedire consequences]rsquo they would have promptly sent the experts to work for me Now (how-ever) following the king my lordrsquos instructions I strictly [hellip] do not argue with any of theclan leaders I have appointed the carpenters and potters [hellip]rdquo⁵sup2

Sargonrsquos official had been commanded to negotiate with the clan leaders (nasī-ku often translated as ldquosheikhrdquo⁵sup3) in order to organise the Samarian workforceand did so although he clearly found the experience frustrating Not onlydoes this letter illustrate that the innate social structures of the resettled popu-lation group had been preserved but also that the Assyrian authorities were ex-pected to respect them even if this caused friction and authority conflicts regard-ing the management of the deportee workers

43 Samarians in Guzana

There are two Assyrian archival texts that demonstrate the presence of Samari-ans in Guzana (Tell Halaf) The first is a sale contract from the year 700 BCE fea-turing a Samarian selling real estate in that city whereas the second text is a let-ter from late in the reign of Esarhaddon that mentions a Samarian as the sourceof incriminating information about a prominent family in Guzana Intriguinglyboth texts have a Libyan connection

Fuchs and Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part III no 280 slightly adapted Pho-tograph httpcdliuclaeduP334710 (accessed 102017) For a recent discussion of the term see Kyle Lawson Younger Jr A Political History of the Ara-means From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities (Atlanta GA SBL Press 2016) 50 Table 2252 56ndash57

118 Karen Radner

431 Guzana 700 BCE A Samarian Sells a Bathhouse

Although it is clear that the sale took place in Guzana the legal document record-ing this transaction was found in Assur in an archive that has no obvious linksto any of the parties involved (ldquoArchive N18rdquo⁵⁴)

ldquoInstead of his seal he impressed his fingernail Fingernail of Samarsquo Samarian son ofŠamaš-bel-ketti from Guzana owner of the bath being sold

A bath with its beams and doors and the wall between Ribṣiṣi and Hallabeše (prop-erty) of Samarsquo in the city of Guzana ndash Qišeraya chief [hellip]ean has contracted and bought itfor fifty shekels of silver The money is paid completely The bathroom in question is ac-quired and purchased Any revocation lawsuit or litigation is void

Whoever in the future at any time whether Samarsquo or his sons his grandsons hisbrothers his relatives or any litigant of his who seeks a lawsuit or litigation with Qišerayaand his sons shall place ten minas of refined silver and one mina of pure gold in the lap ofAdad who resides in Guzana shall tie four white horses at the feet of Sicircn who resides inHarran and shall return the money tenfold to its owner He shall contest in his lawsuitand not succeed

Witness Abba-hellipaya scholar witness Zanbalacirc Arab witness Abarracirc scholar of thetemple of Adad witness Uširihiuhurti Egyptian witness Adda-birsquodi merchant witnessAdad-ahu-uṣur of the temple witness Haia-ereš witness Gabricirc witness Adda-sakacirc sonof Huiri witness Palṭi-Yāu visitor witness Mizi-Yāu visitor witness Ah-abi visitor witnessMini-ahhe leather worker of Il-nemeqi witness Ṣiranucirc and Alara his hellips witness Burayachief beer brewer of the governor of Guzana [witness hellip]aya witness Nihellipni witness Nabucirc-ahu-[hellip] keeper of the tablet

Month Tishri (VII) first day eponym year of Metunu (700 BCE)One shekel of silver for his fingernailrdquo⁵⁵

The seller is a Samarian⁵⁶ and resident of Guzana with the West Semitic nameSamarsquo (ldquoHe has heardrdquo) he shares that name with one of the Samarian teamcommanders in the royal cohort (see above 41) Interestingly his father hasthe Akkadian name Šamaš-bel-ketti (ldquoThe sun god is the lord of truthrdquo) The

Olof Pederseacuten Archives and Libraries in the City of Assur a Survey of the Material from theGerman Excavations Part II (Uppsala Almqvist amp Wiksell 1986) 106ndash 107 First edition Veysel Donbaz and Simo Parpola Neo-Assyrian Legal Texts in Istanbul (Saar-bruumlcken SDV 2001) no 53 updated edition with important corrections Charles DraperldquoTwo Libyan Names in a Seventh Century Sale Document From Assurrdquo Journal of Ancient Egyp-tian Interconnections 7 (2015) 6 The reading LUacuteSi-me-ri-na-a-a ldquoSamarianrdquo was first suggested by Simonetta Ponchia Re-view of Neo-Assyrian Legal Texts in Istanbul Studien zu den Assur-Texten by Veysel Donbaz andSimo Parpola Or 72 (2003) 275ndash76 accepted by Draper ldquoTwo Libyan Namesrdquo 5 12 fn 14 (quot-ing also the approval of Ran Zadok pers comm)


transaction is witnessed by some visitors to Guzana (Assyrian ubāru⁵⁷) whosenames include the divine element Yahweh Palṭi-Yāu ldquoMy deliverance is Yah-wehrdquo⁵⁸ and mMi-zindashIa perhaps for Mahsi-Yāu ldquoWork of Yahwehrdquo⁵⁹ as well as aman identified as an Egyptian with the Libyan name Uširihiuhurti also theowner of an adjoining property bears a Libyan name Hallabeše⁶⁰

As is customary in Neo-Assyrian contracts the family members of the vendorare mentioned as potential litigants this always reflects the actual family situa-tion In this case not only are his (possibly future) sons and grandsons citedhere but also his brothers and his relatives in general This indicates that the Sa-marian Samarsquo is residing in Guzana with his extended family ndash evidence for theAssyrian policy to relocate entire family units The deities who would benefit incase of litigation against the contract are the most prominent local gods thestorm god of Guzana and the moon god of nearby Harran

432 Guzana Late 670s BCE A Samarian Informs on a Corrupt Scribe

Hallabeše the Samarian a [hellip] of the king⁶sup1 is mentioned in an anonymous letterto Esarhaddon (r 680ndash669 BCE) that presents a detailed account of the crimesand misdemeanours of various prominent individuals in Guzana The Samarianrsquostestimony concerns the scribe Tarṣicirc his wife Zazacirc and their son who are accusedof abusing their close relationship to a member of the royal family⁶sup2

The Samarian Hallabeše has a title or profession (unfortunately damaged)that links him to the king His name is of Libyan origin and he shares it withthe neighbour of his fellow Samarian Samarsquo who sold a bathhouse in Guzananearly three decades earlier If this second link between Samarians in Guzana

For a discussion of the term see Draper ldquoTwo Libyan Namesrdquo 12 fn 19 Daniel Schwemer ldquoPalṭī-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 3I edHeather D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2002) 982 Kaisa Aringkerman ldquoMaḫsi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2II edHeather D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001) 675 As discussed in detail by Draper ldquoTwo Libyan Namesrdquo 1ndash 15 Mikko Luukko and Greta Van Buylaere The Political Correspondence of Esarhaddon (Helsin-ki Helsinki University Press 2002) no 63 rev 9ndash 10 ldquo mHal-bi-šuacute URUSa-mir-i-na-a-a [x x]x xLUGAL Photograph httpcdliuclaeduP313461 (accessed 102017) According to the letter Aššur-zeru-ibni socialises with the sons of the king goes regularly toNineveh and does not only wear the golden bracelet and golden dagger that denote an Assyrianof the highest social standing but even a parasol ndash an item exclusively reserved for the royalfamily Michael Roaf ldquoSchirm (parasol) B Archaumlologischrdquo in RlA 12 ed Michael P Streck(2011) 192ndash94

120 Karen Radner

and this Libyan name is not merely a curious coincidence then we can take it asan indication that Charles Draper was correct when suggesting that the popula-tion deported from Samaria included people bearing Libyan names presumablywith roots in Egypt⁶sup3

433 Dur-Katlimmu 656 and 602 BCE More Samarians on the Khabur

For completenessrsquos sake we will briefly mention the fact that there are a numberof people with Yahweh names attested in the private legal records unearthedin the so-called Red House an elite residence at Dur-Katlimmu (Tell SheikhHamad) on the Khabur river

When an irrigated field was sold in 602 BCE one of the adjoining fields isowned by Hazaqi-Yāu (ldquoYahweh is mightyrdquo⁶⁴) and the witnesses to the transac-tion include Dadi-larim son of Ahzi-Yāu (ldquoYahweh has takenrdquo⁶⁵) according to thesale contract documenting the transaction⁶⁶ Michael Heltzer was the first to ten-tatively connect the mention of individuals with Yahweh names in this documentwith the resettlement of the people of Samaria in the Khabur valley a centuryearlier but he also drew attention to other occasions that might have broughtdeportees from the southern Levant to the region⁶⁷ He was not yet aware of asignificantly earlier attestation for one Rapacirc-Yāu (ldquoYahweh has healedrdquo⁶⁸) as awitness in another legal document from Dur-Katlimmu a judicial settlementfrom 656 BCE⁶⁹ There is also another attestation for a Yahweh name at Dur-Kat-limmu in the fragment of an undated private letter⁷⁰

Draper ldquoTwo Libyan Namesrdquo 4ndash5 Daniel Schwemer ldquoHazaqi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 3I edHeather D Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2000) 469 Gebhard J Selz ldquoAhzi-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 1I ed KarenRadner (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1998) 88ndash9 Radner Die neuassyrischen Texte aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad no 37 4 mHa-za-qindashIaacute-a-u rev 14mAh-zindashIaacute-a-u There is also Adad-milki-ereš son of mMe-na-se-e (rev 13) Michael Heltzer ldquoSome Remarks Concerning the Neo-Babylonian Tablets from Šēḫ ḤamadrdquoSAAB 8 (1994) 116 Pierre Villard ldquoRapacirc-Iāurdquo in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2I ed HeatherD Baker (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2002) 1032ndash33 Radner Die neuassyrischen Texte aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad no 110b rev 4 m[Ra]-pandashIa-u Karen Radner ldquoNeue neuassyrische Texte aus Dur-Katlimmu eine Schuumllertafel mit einersumerisch-akkadischen Koumlnigshymne und andere Keilschriftfunde aus den Jahren2003ndash2009rdquo in Dur-Katlimmu 2008 and Beyond ed Hartmut Kuumlhne (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz2010) 185 no 14 5rsquo [m]Ia-a-uacutendashra-qu-ut


It remains of course open whether the presence of persons with Yahwehnames in Dur-Katlimmu during the 7th century BCE has anything to do with theresettlements of Samarians in Guzana which lies about 160 km upstream fromDur-Katlimmu But it is not entirely unlikely that there is a connection giventhat we have encountered a significant number of Yahweh names among or in as-sociation with the resettled Samarians

5 Conclusions

Some of the resettled Samarians attested in the Assyrian archival records did verywell in their new surroundings the military men were members of the royal con-tingent arguably the most prestigious corps of the Assyrian armed forces and inGuzanawe met a Samarian with an extended family who owned a real estate port-folio in the city and another very well-connected Samarian individual who min-gled with the cityrsquos leading residents

We cannot assess the economic standing of the Samarian potters and car-penters who we encountered at Dur-Šarruken but their skill was clearly highlyvalued as King Sargon himself deemed them fit to contribute to the constructionof his new capital in the Halahhu region of Central Assyria In this case we wereable to observe that some of the innate social structures of the resettled popula-tion had not only been preserved but that the Assyrian authorities were expectedto respect them

Repeatedly we found Samarians bearing Yahweh names while in Guzanawe observed a curious connection with Libyan names that highlights how ono-mastics alone are not a reliable indicator of origin or ethnic or cultural identityThe kingdom of Israel was of course neither geographically nor politically isolat-ed and especially its capital Samaria is likely to have been a cosmopolitan citywith sizeable groups of foreign residents when the Assyrian Empire annexed it⁷sup1

It is a matter of debate how many people of a particular local populationwere made to move In the case of the kingdom of Israel this question has re-ceived much attention as it underpins any assessment of the relationship be-tween ancient Israelite and later Samaritan traditions⁷sup2 It is moot in my viewto try and quantify proportions However it is beyond any doubt that the Assyr-ian sources overwhelmingly associate resettlement with persons possessing spe-

For the connection with Egypt and the Libyan-controlled kingdoms in the Nile Delta see Rob-ert Morkotrsquos chapter in this volume Gary N Knoppers Jews and SamaritansThe Origins and History of Their Early Relations (NewYork Oxford University Press 2013) 18ndash44 for a critical assessment of debate

122 Karen Radner

cialised skills with educated elites in the broadest sense highly trained fightersscribes and scholars artisans and craftsmen of all kinds Therefore even if theresettlement programme affected only a relatively small percentage of the overallpopulation the absence of such specialists ndash which in the case of Samaria as wehave discussed included chariot crews potters and carpenters ndash would havemassively eroded and changed local culture and local identity


Robert G Morkot

The End of the Kingdom of Israel A Viewfrom the Nile Valley

1 Introduction

This paper is intended to present the current debates and disputes about the po-litical geography of late-Libyan and early-Kushite Egypt (Fig 1) that form onepart of the context of the reign of Hoshea and the end of the Kingdom of IsraelThe Egyptological perspective on the end of the Kingdom of Israel is not funda-mentally different now to how it was when Kenneth Kitchen published hisground-breaking study of the Libyan and Kushite periods in 1973sup1 Althoughthere has been considerable research on the late Libyan period over the pasttwo decades this has largely concentrated on discussion of detail in terms ofchronologies minutiae of dynastic affiliations and genealogies and specula-tions on power bases A radical proposal for re-ordering two Kushite rulershas repercussions for our understanding of the internal development of the dy-nasty but does not fundamentally alter the view of the period around 730ndash725BCE

2 The Kushite 25th Dynasty

The starting point for establishing the Nile Valley context for the end of the King-dom of Israel is the dating of the 25th Dynasty originating in Kush (modernnorthern Sudan) and the phases of their domination of Egypt The equationof the rulers named monumentally with those recorded by Manetho was estab-lished early in the development of Egyptology and apparently supported by laterdiscoveriessup2 These rulers were Shabaka (= Manethorsquos Sabacon) Shabataka (orShebitqo = Sebichos) and Taharka (or Taharqo = Tar(a)cos) Taharkarsquos successor

Kenneth A Kitchen The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100ndash650 BC) (Warminster Arisamp Phillips 1973 second edition with supplement 1986 third edition with new preface 1996) Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 148ndash73 Robert Morkot and Stephen Quirke ldquoInventingthe 25th Dynasty Turin Stela 1467 and the Construction of Historyrdquo in Begegnungen Antike Kul-turen im Niltal Festgabe fuumlr Erika Endesfelder Karl-Heinz Priese Walter Friedrich Reineke undSteffen Wenig von Schuumllern und Mitarbeiten ed Caris-Beatrice Arnst and Erika Endesfelder (Leip-zig Verlag Helmar Wodtke und Katharina Stegbauer 2001) 349ndash63

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-007

Fig 1 Map of the Nile valley indicating the most important places discussed in this chapter(prepared by the author)

126 Robert G Morkot

Tanutamun is recorded by Egyptian and Assyrian documents The ordering of thepredecessors of the dynasty Alara Kashta and Piye (Piankhy) was establishedthrough a range of inscriptional evidence

The anchor date for the Kushites and consequently the late Libyan phar-aohs is the accession of Taharka in 690 BCE The date is accepted as the earliestcertain date in Egyptian history all earlier dates being calculated from it orbased on the equation of the biblical Shishak with Shoshenq Isup3 or from Sothicdating The reign of Taharka is linked to that of Psamtik I by the text of a stelarecording the burial of a sacred Apis bull at Memphis which states that its instal-lation was in year 26 of the former ruler its death in year 20 of the latter and thatthe bullrsquos age was 21 years⁴ Year 26 is the highest attested of Taharka and as theexact dates for the 26th Dynasty are established (and can be linked to AssyrianBabylonian Persian dates and to Ptolemyrsquos Canon) there is a consensus that theaccession of Taharka fell in 690689 BCE⁵

The internal chronology of the Kushite dynasty thus becomes significant forthe Egyptian context of the end of the Kingdom of Israel The most important as-pect from the perspective of Western Asiatic studies and Assyriology is the datingof the Kushite incursions into Egypt and the conflict of Piye and Tefnakht andthe implications for the years 730ndash720 BCE

For the two immediate predecessors of Taharka there is inscriptional evi-dence from Egypt Although Shabatakarsquos highest regnal year so far documentedis year 3 most scholars have assumed that the reign was longer⁶ The length ofShabakarsquos reign is more certain the statue of Iti is dated to late in year 15⁷ Withonly one dated monument the length of Shabatakarsquos reign has always been cal-culated using either the unreliable epitomes of Manetho or the presumed acces-sion date of Shabaka Until further dated monuments can be confidently attrib-

Peter James and Peter G van der Veen eds Solomon and Shishak Current perspectives fromArchaeology Epigraphy History and Chronology (Oxford Archaeopress 2015) Stela 192 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 161ndash63 Cf Anthony J Spalinger ldquoThe Foreign Policy of Egypt Preceding the Assyrian Conquestrdquo CdE53 (1978) 22ndash47 the arguments for Taharqorsquos accession in 689 BCE do not make much differ-ence Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 154ndash61 esp 154 sect126 (i) although this is based on hiscalculation of the date for Shabakarsquos accession Leo Depuydt ldquoThe Date of Piyersquos Egyptian Cam-paign and the Chronology of the Twenty-fifth Dynastyrdquo JEA 79 (1993) 274 uses the lack ofmonuments as one factor in arguing a minimal reign Robert G Morkot ldquoKingship and Kinshipin the Empire of Kushrdquo in Studien zum Antiken Sudan Akten der 7 Internationalen Tagung fuumlrmeroitistische Forschungen ed Steffen Wenig (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 1999) 205ndash207 British Museum EA 24429 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 153ndash54 Morkot ldquoKingship andKinshiprdquo 207


uted to Shabataka all that can be said is that his reign was not less than threeyearsWith the accession of Taharqo in 690689 BC a strictly minimum chronol-ogy would set the beginning of Shabatakarsquos reign at 6932 BCE and that of Sha-baka (with a full 15 years) at 7087 BCE The reign of Piye (Piankhy) is universallyaccepted as immediately preceding that of Shabaka although its length is farless clear⁸

Leo Depuydt adopted a minimal chronology as the only secure foundationbut later noted the criticisms of other writers and felt obliged to clarify that theminimal date is not necessarily to be taken as an indication of the actual reignlength⁹ The conventional interpretation of the ordering of Kushite rulers theirreign lengths and absolute dates are thus established with high (Kenneth Kitch-en) low (Robert Morkot) and minimal (MorkotDepuydt) alternatives

High Low Minimal

Piye ndash ndash ndashShabaka ndash ndash ndashShabataka ndash ndash ndashTaharka ndash ndash ndash

On the assumption that the conflict between Piye and the Saite ruler Tefnakhtoccurred in years 1920 of Piyersquos reign the range is between 728727 BC and712 BC The issue then becomes the reign length of Piye which is certainly docu-mented to year 24 Scenes relating to the sed-festival suggest he may havereigned for over 30 years but a much disputed date on a bandage does not pro-vide unequivocal evidence for a date higher than year 30sup1⁰

Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 151ndash53 Morkot ldquoKinship and Kinshiprdquo Robert G MorkotThe Black Pharaohs Egyptrsquos Nubian Rulers (London Rubicon Press 2000) 167ndash74 Depuydt ldquoThe Date of Piyersquos Egyptian Campaignrdquo 270ndash71 offers 708 BCE or (using a differentaccession dating system) an absolute minimum start-date of 706 BCE for Shabaqo A minimalchronology had already previously been argued as 7087 BCE for Shabaqorsquos year 1 see PeterJ James I J Thorpe Nikos Kokkinos Robert G Morkot and John A Frankish ldquoCenturies of Dark-ness (Review Feature)rdquo Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1 (1991) 230 235 n 2 (based on theanalysis presented by Morkot at the 7 Internationalen Tagung fuumlr meroitistische Forschungen in1992 eventually published as Morkot ldquoKingship and Kinshiprdquo) BM EA 6640 Donald B Redford ldquoSais and the Kushite Invasions of the Eighth Century BCrdquoJournal of the American Research Center in Egypt 22 (1985) 5ndash 15 questioning year 40 KitchenThird Intermediate Period 152 reading year 30+ Morkot Black Pharaohs 314 n 9

128 Robert G Morkot

3 Recent Debates the Inscription of Sargon IIof Assyria at Tang-i Var in Iran

The most significant recent debates were generated by Grant Framersquos publicationof the inscription of Sargon II of Assyria (721ndash705 BCE) at Tang-i Var near San-andaj in Kurdistan province of Iransup1sup1 Although a record of the campaign againstKaralla the annalistic preamble to the inscription contains another version ofthe well-known episode of Yamani of Ashdodrsquos flight from the advancing Assyr-ian armysup1sup2 The Tang-i Var inscription is the only version of the episode that re-cords the name of the ruler of Meluhha (= Kush) which can only be understoodas that of Shabataka (Shebitqo)

The Tang-i Var inscription has generated a voluminous Egyptological litera-ture the bulk of which has ignored the purpose of the Assyrian text Frame ob-serves that the Tang-i Var text almost certainly belongs to 706 BC relating to thecampaign to Karalla in that year and must have been composed (and carved)before Sargonrsquos death in 705 BCE Frame also comments that the Display Inscrip-tion and the inscription from Room XIV of Sargonrsquos palace in his new capital cityDur-Šarruken (Khorsabad) belong to the same year as they refer to the comple-tion of the construction of that citysup1sup3

The very brief annalistic preamble is not the purpose of the text although ithas drawn the lengthiest commentary from Egyptologists who put forward nu-merous new chronologies of the 25th Kushite Dynastysup1⁴ most claiming that Sar-

Grant Frame ldquoThe Inscription of Sargon II at Tang-i Varrdquo Or 68 (1999) 31ndash57 Morkot Black Pharaohs 200ndash204 with references to the literature Frame ldquoInscription of Sargon IIrdquo 54 Cf David A Aston ldquoTakeloth II a King of the HerakleopolitanTheban Twenty-third DynastyRevisited The Chronology of Dynasties 22 and 23rdquo in The Libyan Period in Egypt ed Gerard P FBroekman Robert J Demareacutee and Olaf E Kaper (Leuven Peeters 2009) 1ndash28 Gerard P FBroekman ldquoThe Egyptian Chronology from the Start of the Twenty-second until the End of theTwenty-fifth Dynasty Facts Suppositions and Argumentsrdquo Journal of Egyptian History 4(2011) 40ndash80 Aidan Dodson Afterglow of Empire Egypt from the Fall of the New Kingdom tothe Saite Renaissance (Cairo and New York American University in Cairo Press 2012)195ndash201 Karl Jansen-Winkeln ldquoThe Chronology of the Third Intermediate Period Dyns22ndash24rdquo in Ancient Egyptian Chronology ed Erik Hornung Rolf Krauss and David AWarburton(Leiden Brill 2006) 234ndash64 Danrsquoel Kahn ldquoThe Inscription of Sargon II at Tang-i Var and theChronology of Dynasty 25rdquo Or 70 (2001) 1ndash 18 id ldquoDivided Kingdom Co-Regency or Sole Rulein the Kingdom(s) of Egypt-and-Kushrdquo AeL 16 (2006) 277ndash91 id ldquoWas There a Co-Regency inthe 25th Dynastyrdquo Mitteilungen der Sudanarchaumlologischen Gesellschaft 17 (2006) 9ndash 17 RolfKrauss ldquoAn Egyptian Chronology for Dynasties XIII to XXVrdquo in The Synchronisation of Civilisa-tions in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium BC vol III Proceedings of the


gonrsquos inscription can be interpreted as indicating that Shabataka was rulingEgypt by the date of the inscription 706 BCE This is a misinterpretation Shaba-taka (if he was really intended to be named at all) is specified as ruler of Meluh-ha (= Kush) not of Egypt When the original Egyptological responses made theincorrect assumption that the reference to Shabataka indicated he was ruling inEgypt by 706 BC and perhaps at the time of Yamanirsquos flight this resulted in thefollowing (very similar) chronologiessup1⁵

Kahn

Aston

Jansen-Winkeln

Krauss

Broekman

Dodson

Shabaka ndash

ndash

ndash

ndash

ndash(minimum)

ndash

Shabataka ndash

ndash

ndash

ndash

ndash(minimum)

ndash

Kitchen dismisses such dates as ldquoquite simply ludicrousrdquo giving two reasonsfirst his belief that Shabaka removed all other kings from Egypt (making inex-plicable the existence of Shilkanni clearly a Delta ruler in 716 BC) and secondthat extending the reign of Shabataka ldquoseems entirely unrealistic given the al-most non-existent state of date-lines so far attested from his reignrdquosup1⁶ The firstpoint is not acceptable as there must have been other kings (such as Geme-nef-khonsu-bak) and weru-chiefs ruling in parts of the Delta throughout theKushite hegemony (see further below)sup1⁷ There is however no evidence to justify

SCIEM 2000 2nd EuroConference ed Manfred Bietak and Ernst Czerny (Vienna Austrian Acad-emy of Sciences Press 2007) 173ndash89 The information in the following table derives from Kahn ldquoInscription of Sargon IIrdquo AstonldquoTakeloth IIrdquo 5ndash6 20 Jansen-Winkeln ldquoChronology of the Third Intermediate Periodrdquo 258ndash61Krauss ldquoAn Egyptian Chronologyrdquo 187 Broekman ldquoThe Egyptian Chronologyrdquo 57 and DodsonAfterglow of Empire 201 Kenneth A Kitchen ldquoThe Third Intermediate Period in Egypt An Overview of Fact amp Fic-tionrdquo in The Libyan Period in Egypt ed Gerard P F Broekman Robert J Demareacutee and OlafE Kaper (Leuven Peeters 2009) 161ndash202 esp 163 Note that not all the ldquokingsrdquo (šarru) listed by Esarhaddon were necessarily local ldquomayorsrdquo inEgyptian terms Some cases are clear eg Mantimeanhe šarru of Ni is the well-known Mon-tjuemhat Mayor of Thebes Yet at least some of these were actual monarchs as Kitchen ThirdIntermediate Period 395ndash97 accepts with respect to Niku I (672ndash664 BC) and Putubishti ofTanis who he identifies as Sehetepib(en)re Pedubast II From the finds at Tanis Kitchen ac-knowledges the possibility of a line of ldquokingletsrdquo including Gemenef-khonsu-bak Robert GMorkot and Peter J James ldquoPeftjauawybast King of Nen-nesut Genealogy Art History and

130 Robert G Morkot

stretching the reign of Shabataka to some 16 years or more from the three attest-ed even if a reign longer than the documented three years seems more likely

The most important point (somewhat obscured in Kitchenrsquos argument) isthat the new high dates derived from the Tang-i Var inscription run completelycounter to the well-raked over evidence that the Kushites were not in direct con-trol of Lower Egypt by 7132 BCE when Yamani of Ashdod made appeal to ldquoPirlsquouof Muṣrirdquo (that is Pharaoh of Egypt) for help This Pirlsquou was certainly not a Kush-ite ruler but is most probably identical with Šilkanni who sent a gift of horsesfrom the Nile Delta region to Sargon II in 716 BCE according to the latterrsquos in-scriptions The high dates advocated for Shabaka indicate the end of Piyersquosreign in 7221 BCE ndash thereby pushing his accession backwards from Kitchenrsquos747 BCE to around 754 BCEsup1⁸

If Shabaka had already made Memphis his base in Egypt before 716 BCEhow could a local Delta dynast such as Šilkanni have dared to have independ-ently sent a gift of horses to Sargon II It seems a most unlikely scenario IfShabaka were already established at Memphis surely he himself would havesent the horses especially as Šilkanni would have almost certainly obtainedthese from Kush in the first placesup1⁹ The same problem recurs in 7132 BCEwhen Yamani of Ashdod sent gifts not to the king of Kush but to the pharaohof Egypt (ldquoPirlsquou of Muṣrirdquo arguably still Šilkanni) attempting to obtain helpagainst the Assyrians Sargon records that the Pirlsquou was powerless to help andthat after his expulsion from Ashdod Yamani fled through Egypt to Meluhhawhere he received sanctuary Again if Shabaka were based at Memphis whywould the decision not have been made there to give him asylum Or if Shabakawas the Pirlsquou as some have claimed ndash was the flight to Meluhha some kind ofsubterfuge in which Shabaqo was pretending to have no authority over the re-mote land of Meluhha Again a most unlikely scenario

After the conflict with Tefnakht Piye (who did not make his capital at Mem-phis but retained control of Upper Egypt) Šilkannithe Pirlsquou would have re-mained at least the nominal vassal of the Kushite kings but with enough inde-pendence to have diplomatic relations with the Assyrians who were active onEgyptrsquos very border Kush and Meluhha seem very removed from all these pro-

the Chronology of Late-Libyan Egyptrdquo Antiguo Oriente 7 (2009) 13ndash55 argue that the main 22nd

Dynasty line (in the person of Shoshenq V) continued at Tanis until the reign of Shabaqo Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 589 Table 4 For Kushite horses see Robert G Morkot ldquoThe Origin of the Kushite State A Response to thePaper of Laacuteszloacute Toumlroumlkrdquo in Actes de la VIIIe Confeacuterence Internationale des Eacutetudes Nubiennesvol 1 Communications principales (Villeneuve drsquoAscq Universiteacute Charles de Gaulle ndash Lille 31995) 237ndash38 and Lisa Heidorn ldquoThe Horses of Kushrdquo JNES 56 (1997) 105ndash14


ceedings indeed it is specifically described by Sargon as a remote countrywhose kings had not been in touch with Assyria before the extradition of Yama-ni Unless we assume that this is mere hyperbole and that all Assyrian intelli-gence about Egypt at this period was virtually useless we have to concludethat Shabakarsquos conquest of the north did not take place before c 711 BCE Thisrenders the high dates derived from Tang-i Var in which Shabakarsquos secondyear fell c 720 BCE totally unworkable Shabaka after all is first documentedin Egypt in his second regnal year and his defeat of the Saite ruler Bakanranefby which he gained control of the whole of the Delta is generally attributed tothat same yearsup2⁰ Besides as detailed above any attempt to lengthen the reign ofShabataka on the evidence of the Tang-i Var inscription is misinterpreting thesource As Kitchen rightly notes it has been lsquoglibly and superficially assumedrsquothat Shabataka was reigning as pharaoh in Egypt in 706 BCEsup2sup1 This misinterpre-tation of the evidence is having wider repercussions by being uncritically quot-ed Jeffrey Blakely and James Hardin citing Grant Frame Donald Redford andDanrsquoel Kahn state that Yamani was ldquoeventually returned to Assyria hellip by Phar-aoh Shebitkurdquosup2sup2

4 Recent Debates Re-Ordering the KushiteKings

The debate has now gone even further in radically re-assessing the internal suc-cession and chronology of the 25th Dynasty Michael Baacutenyai proposed the rever-sal of the generally accepted order of the Kushite kings Shabaka and Shabatakaarguing that the generally accepted readings of Manethorsquos Sabacon as Shabakaand Manethorsquos Sebichos as Shabataka were wrongsup2sup3 This has been followed by anumber of writers indeed in the most recent defence of this interpretationClaus Jurman notes that the order has now entered into one general history of

Morkot Black Pharaohs 205ndash208 Kitchen ldquoThird Intermediate Periodrdquo 163 sectsect4 6 Jeffrey A Blakely and James W Hardin ldquoSouthwestern Judah in the Late Eighth CenturyBCErdquo BASOR 326 (2002) 11ndash64 Michael Baacutenyai ldquoEin Vorschlag zur Chronologie der 25 Dynastie in Aumlgyptenrdquo Journal ofEgyptian History 6 (2013) 46ndash129 Michael Baacutenyai with commentaries by Anke I Bloumlbaum Ger-ard Broekman Karl Jansen-Winkeln Claus Jurman Danrsquoel Kahn Angelika Lohwasser and HansNeumann ldquoDie Reihenfolge der kuschitischen Koumlnigerdquo Journal of Egyptian History 8 (2015)115ndash80

132 Robert G Morkot

Egypt as accepted truthsup2⁴ Although this change in order post-dates the end ofthe kingdom of Israel the repercussions impact on interpretation of the earlierphases of the dynasty

Baacutenyairsquos chronology adopts the minimalist chronology advocated by De-puydt but reverses the order of Shabaka and Shabataka and also builds in alarge co-regency between Shabaka and Taharka that is not justified by the evi-dence but necessitated to accommodate the known reign-length of Shabaka

Baacutenyai

Piye ndash BCEShabataka ndash BCEShabaka ndash BCETaharka ndash BCE

Jurman supporting the reordering of the rulers also follows a lower absolutechronology thus maintaining the more conventional date for Piyersquos accessionand hence the conflict with Tefnakht On both Jurmanrsquos and Baacutenyairsquos chronol-ogies the conflict between Piye and Tefnakht would have occurred around 715BCE

Freacutedeacuteric Payraudeau accepts the reversal of rulers and a thirty year longreign for Piyesup2⁵ He therefore dates Piyersquos reign 744ndash714 BCE with the conflictwith Tefnakht in 723 BCE followed by an interruption to Kushite control ofUpper Egypt by the obscure king Iny around 720 BCE In this scheme Piyersquos suc-cessor Shabataka reigned 714ndash705 BCE establishing himself in Egypt and de-feating the Saite ruler Bakenranef in 712 BCE

There are numerous issues of interpretation of the inscriptional evidencethat have not yet been addressed by the proposers of this scheme Our under-standing of the royal genealogies and of the method of succession requires analmost complete revisionsup2⁶

Claus Jurman ldquoThe Order of the Kushite Kings According to Sources from the Eastern Desertand Thebes Or Shabataka was here firstrdquo Journal of Egyptian History 10 (2017) 124ndash51 Freacutedeacuteric Payraudeau ldquoLes obscures deacutebuts de la domination soudanaise en Egypte (deux-iegraveme moitieacute du VIIIe s av J-C)rdquo in Comptes rendus des seacuteances de lrsquoAcadeacutemie des Inscriptionset Belles-Lettres 2014 1597ndash611 also id ldquoRetour sur la Succession ShabaqondashShabataqordquo NeHetRevue numeacuterique drsquoEacutegyptologie 1 (2014) 115ndash27 (online httpsfe-egyptologiewebsiteindexphppublicationsla-revue-nehet last accessed 30 January 2018) Morkot ldquo Kingship and Kinshiprdquo


5 Egyptian Involvement in Southwest Asiain the 8th and Early 7th Centuries BCE

The recorded interactions of Egypt with Israel Judah and Assyria in the periodpreceding the reign of Sennacherib (704ndash681 BCE) are few but have generatedconsiderable literature According to the Hebrew Bible the first notable Egyptianactivity was the sack of Jerusalem by ldquoShishakrdquo in the reign of Rehoboam gen-erally dated to 925 BCE Since Franccedilois Champollion Shishakrsquos campaign hasbeen connected with the relief of Shoshenq I on the ldquoBubastite Portalrdquo of thetemple of Karnak despite the problems of linking the name lists there withthe narrative of the Bible This is not the place to discuss the campaign orwhether it represents an attempt by the new power in Egypt to re-assert someinfluence in southwestern Asiasup2⁷

The dynasty that descended from Shoshenq I (following Manetho the 22nd

Dynasty) was based in the eastern Delta at Per-Bast (Bubastis) and Tanis theytherefore controlled the route across north Sinai to Gaza The dynasty ruled allof Egypt until the death of Osorkon II when problems began notably in thesouthern city of Thebes and new rival dynasties (or lines of the same family)competed for control There is no consensus on the interpretation of the evidencefor late-Libyan Egypt into which the Kushites extended their power

The next Egyptian involvement was relatively small-scale when 1000 sol-diers were sent to join the coalition led by Hadad-idri of Damascus againstthe army of Shalmaneser III of Assyria (858ndash824 BCE) at the battle of Qarqarin 853 BCE Kitchen attributes this involvement to Osorkon II based on his recon-struction of the chronology and is generally followedsup2⁸

Shalmaneser III continued to bring his armies to the Levant and in 841 BCEachieved suzerainty over the rulers recorded on the ldquoBlack Obeliskrdquo Here theusurper king of Israel Jehu is shown paying homage and the tribute of theland of Muṣri is recorded Kitchensup2⁹ dates this event to the reign of Takeloth IIregarding the king as the direct successor of Osorkon II in Tanis others considerTakeloth II a Theban or Herakleopolitan rulersup3⁰

A major problem for defining the political and economic connections be-tween Egypt and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the Phoenician cities

For discussion and references see Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 72ndash75 and James andvan der Veen Solomon and Shishak Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 325 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 327 Aston ldquoTakeloth IIrdquo

134 Robert G Morkot

is the lack of any significant amount of detailed economic evidencesup3sup1 The re-cords of the tribute presented by the Levantine cities and states to Assyriahints at trade with Egypt and (perhaps indirectly) Kush ebony ivory elephanthides and exotic animals are all mentioned Some indication of the sorts ofother commodities that were exported is given in the ldquoReport of Wenamunrdquo ofthe very late 20th Dynasty whether or not the text is an actual report or a fictionalaccountsup3sup2 Whilst in Byblos to acquire timber Wenamun received 500 rolls ofpapyrus from Nesubanebdjed and Tentamun the rulers based in Tanis alongwith vessels of gold and silver and garments of ldquoroyal linenrdquo (byssos) andldquofine linenrdquo High quality linen was an Egyptian product and the best qualitya royal monopoly and there is evidence that it was dyed in cities such as Tyrebefore being made into garments which were then sent to Assyria Papyrus pro-duction seems to have been entirely Egyptian and the increase in the use of Ara-maic probably saw an increase in its usage across Western Asia and hence in itsexport Papyrus too varied in quality and that made in the eastern Delta aroundTanis was one of the best

Egypt under Libyan rule continued to have a close relationship with Byblosattested by the statue fragments of Shoshenq I Osorkon I and Osorkon II foundthere Trade presumably continued with other Phoenician cities such as SidonTyre and Ashdod although the direct evidence comes from the Kushite periodTaharka names Asiatic commodities such as timber and metal that were usedin the building of the temple of Kawa during the first decade of his reignsup3sup3and a treaty with Esarhaddon specifically forbids Barsquoalu of Tyre from engagingin trade with Egyptsup3⁴ A letter of Sennacherib as Crown Prince to Sargon IIlists contributions received by the royal palace including elephant hides rollsof papyrus and garments made of byssossup3⁵ all Egyptian or Kushite products

Moshe Elat ldquoThe Economic Relations of the Neo-Assyrian Empire with Egyptrdquo JAOS 98(1978) 20ndash34 Robert G Morkot ldquoNorth-East Africa and Trade at the Crossroads of the Nile Val-ley the Mediterranean and the Red Seardquo in Dynamics of Production in the Ancient Near1300ndash500 BC ed Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia (Oxford and Philadelphia Oxbow 2016) 257ndash74 Recent editions and discussions include Robert K Ritner The Libyan Anarchy Inscriptionsfrom Egyptrsquos Third Intermediate Period (Atlanta Society for Biblical Literature 2009) 87ndash99(no 18) and Jean Winand ldquoThe Report of Wenamun A Journey in Ancient Egyptian Literaturerdquoin Ramesside Studies in Honour of K A Kitchen ed Mark Collier and Steven Snape (BoltonRutherford Press 2009) 541ndash59 Morkot Black Pharaohs 252ndash56 Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (Helsinki Hel-sinki University Press 1988) no 5 Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part I Letters from Assyria and the West (Hel-sinki Helsinki University Press 1987) no 34


Egyptian alabaster (calcite) vessels were another common export and havebeen excavated at Samariasup3⁶ and in the cemetery at Almuntildeecar in Spainsup3⁷Other vessels had hieroglyphic texts and cartouches added presumably to in-crease their valuesup3⁸ The vessels presumably made their way from Tanis to oneof the Levantine cities and thence to Spain Scarabs carrying the names of thelate-Libyan kings Pedubast Pimay and Osorkon III have been found at CarthageSpain and in Italysup3⁹ The ldquoBocchoris vasesrdquo from Tarquinia (an original Egyptianproduct) and Lilybaeum (a non-Egyptian copy) along with other faience givesome indication of other types of manufactures exported⁴⁰

In the later years of the Libyan period there may have been a number of cen-tres which were particularly involved in international trade Tanis both a royalresidence city and situated on the sea must have been one of these with thenames of successive 22nd Dynasty rulers namely Shoshenq I Osorkon I Osor-kon II Takeloth II and Shoshenq III occurring on items found abroad Memphistoo remained important as a major royal residence city and trading centre Inthe western Delta Sais may well have established early contacts with the Phoe-nicians The Phoenician expansion along the North African coast would have re-quired staging posts and doubtless contacts would have been made with majortowns nearby Certainly the ldquoBocchoris vasesrdquo and scarabs suggest that Sais hadcontacts with the Phoenician traders

Following Shalmaneser III (858ndash824 BCE) the next Assyrian ruler to be ac-tive in the west was Tiglath-pileser III (745ndash727 BCE) This is one of the few in-stances of specific contact between Egypt and Israel to be documented The bib-lical episode of Hoshearsquos appeal to ldquoSo king of Egyptrdquo c 725 BCE has been veryextensively discussed and has a well-known and voluminous literature⁴sup1 Earlier

George A Reisner Clarence S Fisher and David G Lyon Harvard Excavations at Samaria1908ndash 1910 vol II (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1924) pl 56 (g)with name of Osor-kon II Josep Padroacute i Parcerisa Egyptian-Type Documents from the Mediterranean Littoral of the Iber-ian Peninsula Before the Roman Conquest vol III Study of the Material (Leiden E J Brill 1985)pl LXXVII (Takeloth II) pl CXXVII1 (Osorkon II) Parcerisa Egyptian-Type Documents pl CIX (Shoshenq III) pl CXIV1 (Osorkon II copiedfrom the original vessel) Jean Vercoutter Les objets eacutegyptiens et eacutegyptisants du mobilier funeacuteraire carthaginois (ParisLibrairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner 1945) Josep Padroacute i Parcerisa Egyptian-Type Documentsfrom the Mediterranean Littoral of the Iberian Peninsula Before the Roman Conquest vol IIStudy of the Material (Leiden Brill 1983) Glenn Markoe Phoenicians (Berkeley University of California Press 2000) 158 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 372ndash75 Morkot Black Pharaohs 126ndash27 310 n 20 JohnDay ldquoThe Problem of lsquoSo King of Egyptrsquo in 2 Kings xvii 4rdquo VT 42 (1992) 289ndash301

136 Robert G Morkot

Egyptologists such as Flinders Petrie identified ldquoSordquo with Shabaka arguing thathe acted as a Viceroy or regent in Egypt for either Kashta or Piye of Kush Morerecently reading the name as a place rather than person was proposed by Don-ald Redford who argued that ldquoSordquo was a reference to Sau (Sais) and thus to Tef-nakht⁴sup2 Most writers prefer to understand ldquoSordquo as an abbreviation for Osorkonand usually number him lsquoIVrsquo arguing that the date of the events is far too late foran identification with Osorkon III The rulerrsquos identification with a specific docu-mented pharaoh is very largely dependent on the broader interpretations of thepolitical geography and chronology of the period hence there is a lack of con-sensus Furthermore in this volume Christoph Levin raises doubts about thevalidity of this episode as recorded in the Book of Kings regarding the nameas an interpolation of the late Persian or Hellenistic period and Timo Tekoniemiexpands on the complexities of the traditions preserved in other sources Clearlywithout any corroborating Egyptian or Assyrian sources the validity of the Bookof Kings as a source and hence the reality of the appeal to ldquoSordquo is questionable

Another considerable literature relates to the identification of Sargon IIrsquos op-ponent at the battle of Raphia in 720 BCE ldquoSibrsquoerdquo as the name in the Assyrianinscription was originally read was once identified with the biblical ldquoSo king ofEgyptrdquo Since the text clearly calls him ldquoarmy leaderrdquo rather than ldquokingrdquo and thename has been re-read as Rersquoe the Egyptian equivalent would be Raia The ques-tion then becomes which ruler of Egypt sent an army against the Assyrians Thelogical answer would be the leading ruler of Egypt at the time which brings usback to the array of possible interpretations derived from chronological assump-tions

In 716 BCE tribute was sent from Egypt to Sargon II by a king Šilkanni ac-knowledged to be an ldquoOsorkonrdquo⁴sup3 It can only be assumed that despite Piyersquos su-zerainty Osorkon continued to be recognised as the most important of the Deltarulers and hence in international terms the king of Egypt

The other significant international event with repercussions in the Nile val-ley is the rebellion and flight of Yamani of Ashdod In 712 BCE Sargon II con-quered Ashdod expelling the ldquousurperrdquo Yamani who fled as far as he could toescape the clutches of the Assyrians A key passage in Sargonrsquos records as trans-lated by A Leo Oppenheim states that Yamani ldquofled into the territory of Muṣri ndashwhich belongs (now) to Ethiopia (Meluhha) ndash and his (hiding) place could not

Redford ldquoSais and the Kushite Invasionsrdquo and Donald B Redford Egypt Canaan and Israelin Ancient Times (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1992) Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 143 376 n 756 Morkot Black Pharaohs 128 193 with ref-erences


be detectedrdquo⁴⁴ Kenneth Kitchen understood this as meaning that Shabaka musthave conquered Egypt ldquoby 712 BC at the very latestrdquo⁴⁵ advocating 716 BCE forShabakarsquos accession⁴⁶

First it was pointed out long ago by Anthony Spalinger that the alleged postquem of 712 BCE for the invasion of Shabaka is based on a mistranslation by Op-penheim of the text⁴⁷ Rather than saying that Yamani fled to Muṣri which ldquobe-longsrdquo to Meluhha the correct reading is that he fled to Meluhha which borderson Egypt or ldquoto the border of Egypt which is at the territory of Meluhhardquo⁴⁸ Thecorrected translation is now generally accepted including by Kitchen himself⁴⁹Hence the Pirlsquou of Muṣri to whom Yamani appealed for aid in 7132 BCE was nota Kushite overlord of Egypt but the leading Delta dynast possibly still ŠilkanniIt follows that far from the Assyrian evidence supporting Kitchenrsquos relatively highchronology it would follow that 7132 BCE is a firm terminus post quem for theconquest by Shabaka (or Shabataka if following Baacutenyairsquos revised order) Thefirst year of Shabaka cannot have been as high as 716 BCE and hence cannotbe used to calculate (by subtracting the known 1415 years of his reign inEgypt) the accession of Shabataka to 702 BCE There is no longer any concreteobjection to a later date for the conquest of Egypt by Shabaka (or Shabataka)and hence a minimal dating for the 25th Dynasty (see above) with the latterrsquosreign beginning even as late as 7087 BCE

The debates arising from the Tang-i Var inscription unnecessarily raised thedates for the Kushite invasion of Egypt by Shabaka and greatly extended thereign of Shabataka in direct conflict with the Assyrian evidence The proposedreversal of ordering of kings has carried some of the raised dating and extendedreigns across into the new scheme Only Claus Jurman has proposed a workablerevision that adheres to the evidence But whether it is ldquotruerdquo remains to be sub-stantiated ndash numerous questions remain unanswered So despite the consider-able discourse the actualiteacute of the Nile valley context to the end of the Kingdomof Israel remains essentially that argued broadly by Kitchen and other writers

A Leo Oppenheim ldquoBabylonian and Assyrian Historical Textsrdquo in Ancient Near EasternTexts Relating to the Old Testament ed James B Pritchard (Princeton NJ Princeton UniversityPress 1969 3rd edition) 285 (11ndash 15) 286 (90ndash 112) Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 144 (his emphasis) James et al ldquoCenturies of Darkness (Review Feature)rdquo 230 235 n 2 Spalinger ldquoThe Year 712 BCrdquo 97 n 17 Alan R Millard as cited in Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 583 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 583 xl Redford ldquoSais and the Kushite Invasionsrdquo 7 n 11Kahn ldquoDivided Kingdomrdquo 279

138 Robert G Morkot

Kushite control of the Nile Valley into Upper Egypt Libyan kingdoms in Middleand Lower Egypt with numerous Libyan fiefdoms under lesser rulers

6 The Political Geography of Late Libyan Egypt

Lengthily discussed the principal source for the political geography of Egypt atthe time of the Kushite incursion is the long narrative inscription of Piye (Piank-hy) of Kush known variously as the ldquoVictory Stelardquo or ldquoTriumphal Stelardquo⁵⁰ Spe-cifically concerned with the defeat of the Saite ruler Tefnakht the text details thenumerous rulers of Egypt revealing that there were four ldquouraeus-wearersrdquo ndashkings in the fullest pharaonic sense along with the Libyan Great Chiefs andChiefs of the Ma (Meshwesh) and the ruler of Sais

The inscription is dated to New Yearrsquos Day of year 21 of the reign of Piye andmost of those who have discussed the events have assumed that they occurred inthe two years immediately preceding beginning in year 19⁵sup1 The present writerrsquossuggestion that the campaign should be attributed to year 4 or year 12 has notbeen accepted⁵sup2 Giving an absolute date for the campaign is more difficult⁵sup3Kitchen and Aston and Taylor place the campaign in 728 BCE⁵⁴ The recent dis-cussions of the chronology of the 25th Dynasty have not specifically addressedthe issue but generally imply a rather higher date if a long reign for Piye is ac-cepted Even adopting a minimal chronology for the 25th Dynasty the evidenceindicates that the Kushites controlled southern Egypt and had vassal rulers inMiddle Egypt during the decade 730ndash720 BCE

From the text of the Victory Stela we can state that the southernmost part ofEgypt centred on Thebes was under Kushite control and that there was somesort of military presence that Piye ndash in Kush at the time of Tefnakhtrsquos south-ward campaign ndash could send against the Saite army⁵⁵ Another inscription ofPiye the ldquoSandstone Stelardquo is only partially preserved but can be dated earlyin his reign probably around year 3⁵⁶ Altogether the evidence indicates that

Cairo JE 48862 and 47086ndash47089 Nicholas Grimal Eacutetudes sur la propagande royale Eacutegypti-enne vol I La stegravele triomphale de Pi(ankh)y au Museacutee du Caire JE 48862 et 47086ndash47089(Cairo Institut franccedilais drsquoArcheacuteologie Orientale du Caire 1981) Morkot Black Pharaohs 167ndash68 Morkot Black Pharaohs 172ndash74 184 200 Morkot and James ldquoPeftjauawybastrdquo 15 Morkot and James ldquoPeftjauawybastrdquo 17ndash 18 Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 234 Aston and Taylor ldquoThe Family of Takeloth IIIrdquo Morkot Black Pharaohs 182ndash85 Morkot ldquoThe Origin of the Kushite Staterdquo id Black Pharaohs 169ndash74


Piye was recognised as ruler in Thebes and Upper Egypt His immediate prede-cessor is generally believed to have been Kashta and although the evidence forhis reign and actions is slight most writers have assumed that he began theprocess of Kushite expansion into Upper Egypt⁵⁷ The most notable indicatorof his ambition is the installation of his daughter Amenirdis as heiress to thepriestly office of Godrsquos Wife of Amun at Thebes The incumbent was the Libyanprincess Shepenwepet daughter of Osorkon III Although Kitchen argued thather brother Piye placed Amenirdis in this role one must stress that all otherGodrsquos Wives were installed by their fathers

The northern limit of Kushite rule in Upper Egypt is not specified in any textbut somewhere between Abydos and Asyut seems likely The early Libyan HighPriest of Amun Iuwelot (son of Osorkon I) stated that his northern militaryboundary lay at the nome of Asyut⁵⁸ Tjeny (Girga) slightly north of Abydoswas the base of Vizier in the later 25th Dynasty⁵⁹ and the Ptolemaic administra-tive centre for the Thebaid Ptolemais Hermiou was in the same region

The ldquoSandstone Stelardquo of Piye is important in carrying a speech of the godAmun of Thebes (Waset) who addresses the Kushite king as ldquoRuler of Egypt(Kemet)rdquo and gives him the power to establish rulers or not⁶⁰

ldquoHe to whom I say lsquoYou are a wer-Chiefrsquo he shall be a wer-ChiefHe to whom I say lsquoYou are not a Chiefrsquo he shall not be a wer-ChiefHe to whom I say lsquoMake an appearance [ie as nesut-king]rsquo he shall make an appearanceHe to whom I say lsquoDo not make an appearance [as nesut-king]rsquo he shall not make an ap-pearancerdquo

The distinction between the Chiefs (in Egyptian werweru) and those who ldquomakeappearancerdquo as full kings is very clear and reflected in the text of the ldquoVictoryStelardquo We can see in these texts the Kushite confirmation of rulers in their po-sitions and perhaps deposition of opponents⁶sup1 The later Assyrian list of Egyp-

Morkot Black Pharaohs 157ndash66 ldquoStegravele de lrsquoapanagerdquo Cairo JE 31882 Karl Jansen-Winkeln Inschriften der Spaumltzeit Teil II Die22ndash24 Dynastie (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2007) 77ndash80 (no 168) Ritner The Libyan Anarchy271ndash78 (no 69) Morkot Black Pharaohs 275 Anthony Leahy ldquoNespamedu lsquoKingrsquo of Thinisrdquo Goumlttinger Mis-zellen 35 (1979) 31ndash39 Morkot Black Pharaohs 179 Ritner The Libyan Anarchy 461ndash64 (no 143) Morkot ldquoThe Origin of the Kushite Staterdquo 231ndash32 id Black Pharaohs 179ndash80

140 Robert G Morkot

tian rulers dating from 671 BCE⁶sup2 or more conventionally 6676 BCE indicates asimilar process

North of the Kushite-controlled Thebaid was the vassal-kingdom of Khmunu(Hermopolis) under the rule of Nimlot This appears to be a new kingdom andone possibly established by the Kushites As Tefnakht and the Delta rulers ad-vanced south Nimlot defected but was soon besieged by Piyersquos army⁶sup3 Nimlotrsquosidentity and association with other dynasties has been the subject of discussionbut is not directly relevant to the issues here It is possible that he was still rulerat the time of the Assyrian list which records a ldquoLamintu of Himunurdquo althoughmost Egyptologists assume that this was a like-named grandson⁶⁴

North of Khmunu lay another vassal kingdom of Piyersquos centred on Nen-nesut(Herakleopolis) in a controlling position at the mouth of the Fayum and in avery fertile part of Egypt Its precise limits are not stated but its southern borderwas presumably the northern border of Nimlotrsquos kingdom Nen-nesut controlledaccess to Memphis and the Delta from the south It also included the fortressesat Teudjoi (el-Hiba) and Per-Sekhem-kheper-re that had been the seats of formi-dable royal representatives throughout the Libyan period The kingdom appearsto have been a new creation although a number of Egyptologists notably DavidAston have argued that it was the centre of the ldquo23rd Dynastyrdquo Piyersquos vassal rulerwas Peftjauawybast who was related by marriage to the family of Takeloth IIIand Rudamun (both sons of Osorkon III) It has been generally assumed thathe was a member of one of the Libyan royal families although the suggestionof Morkot and James⁶⁵ that he could be identified with the like-named HighPriest of Ptah and descendant of Osorkon II has not been widely acceptedThe northern limit of Peftjauawybastrsquos kingdom lay somewhere in the regionof Medum Lisht and Tep-ihu

Memphis one of the largest and most significant cities had been broughtunder his own rule by Tefnakht The ldquoVictory Stelardquo narrates Tefnakhtrsquos expand-ing power from his original power base in Sau (Sais) across the western Deltaand southwards to Memphis

The central and eastern Delta was controlled by Libyan chiefs of differingranks⁶⁶ There were also two full kings Osorkon who controlled Per-Bast (Bu-

Herbert Verreth ldquoThe Egyptian Eastern Border Region in Assyrian Sourcesrdquo JAOS 119 (1999)234ndash47 Morkot Black Pharaohs 182ndash83 187ndash88 Eg Anthony Leahy ldquoRoyal Iconography and Dynastic Change 750ndash725 BC the Blue andCap Crownsrdquo JEA 78 (1992) 223ndash40 Morkot and James ldquoPeftjauawybastrdquo Morkot Black Pharaohs 191ndash95


bastis) and Iuput of Tent-remu The identification of Iuputrsquos centre of power isuncertain Kitchen suggested Tell Muqdam⁶⁷ The references to Osorkon seemto indicate that he had some considerable prestige amongst the rulers (or atleast with Piye) and his seat of Per-Bast indicates he was in the line of rulersdescended from Shoshenq I (conventionally termed ldquo22nd Dynastyrdquo) The ldquoVictoryStelardquo names no separate ruler in Tanis although the ldquo22nd Dynastyrdquo originatedin Per-Bast they were buried at Tanis and built extensively in the city The rulerssuch as Gemenef-khonsu-bak and Pedubast attested by monuments from Tanismust thus be placed later than Osorkon and Piye

Egyptological literature has been concerned with who these individual rulerswere and how they relate (genealogically and geo-politically) to the scheme ofdynasties derived from Manetho There can hardly be said to be consensussome preferring to see Osorkon III and his successors Takeloth III and Rudamunas the direct line from the 22nd Dynasty rulers Shoshenq I and Osorkon II whilstothers prefer to see them as an entirely separate ldquo23rd Dynastyrdquo that was based inMiddle or Upper Egypt Indeed for some writers the ldquo23rd Dynastyrdquo has becomeitinerant wandering around Egypt in search of a power-base from Thebes toHermopolis andor Herakleopolis (surely a reflection of the unsatisfactory natureof this particular reconstruction) Manethorsquos skeletal king-list has now been in-flated with numerous rulers attested monumentally who have been ascribed toit for no good reason In some chronologies there are contemporaneous ldquo23rdrdquodynasties based in Tanis Asyut Hermopolis Herakleopolis and Leontopolis

The main issue is the identity of Osorkon of Per-Bast Petrie and many Egyp-tologists of the late-19th and early-20th centuries identified him with Osorkon III awell-documented pharaoh who installed his daughter Shepenwepet I in the sig-nificant religious office of Godrsquos Wife of Amun at Thebes Shepenwepet I lateradopted the Kushite princess Amenirdis I as her successor to the role whichestablishes a direct link between the Libyan and Kushite dynasties More recent-ly the equation with Osorkon III was abandoned and Piyersquos opponent viewed asa far more obscure Osorkon lsquoIVrsquo The French team working at Tanis recovered agroup of blocks carrying the name of an Osorkon with relief images in an ldquoarch-aisingrdquo style⁶⁸ Although the Prenomen Usermaetre is that of Osorkon III the

Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 129 360ndash61 Robert G Morkot ldquoAll in the Detail Some Further Observation on lsquoArchaismrsquo and Style inLibyan-Kushite-Saite Egyptrdquo in Thebes in the First Millennium BC ed Elena Pischikova JuliaBudka and Kenneth Griffin (Cambridge Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014) 380ndash88 RobertG Morkot and Peter J James ldquoDead-Reckoning the Start of the 22nd Dynasty From Shoshenq VBack to Shoshenq Irdquo in James and van der Veen Solomon and Shishak 20ndash41

142 Robert G Morkot

blocks have generally been attributed to Osorkon lsquoIVrsquo The identity of Osorkondoes have bearing on the reference to Šilkanni

The Kushite military action led by Piye captured Khmunu relieved Nen-nesut and stormed Memphis Piye received the homage of all of the Libyan rul-ers with the exception of Tefnakht ndash in the Delta city of Hut-hery-ib (Athribis)The Kushite king then returned south the status quo ante restored Tefnakhttook his oath of loyalty in Sais


Irrespective of the alternative chronological and genealogical interpretations thathave been proposed very recently the broad view of Egypt at the time of Assy-riarsquos destruction of Samaria and the end of the Kingdom of Israel remains essen-tially the same Summing up these are the key points

The Kushites controlled the Nile valley throughout Kush (modern northernSudan) into southern Egypt They had a power base in Thebes with the northernlimit of their control somewhere in the AbydosGirga-Asyut region There werevassal kingdoms north of Kushite territory in the Nile valley Egypt was dividedinto five kingdoms and numerous smaller principalities

The kingdom of Khmunu (Hermopolis) was ruled by Nimlot at the time ofPiyersquos campaign The kingdom of Nen-nesut (Herakleopolis) may have been aKushite creation and no longer existed at the time of the Assyrian conquest inthe 670s BCE The Delta was divided between the principality of Sau (Sais) inthe west smaller principalities under Libyan Great Chiefs and Chiefs and twokingdoms in the central and eastern Delta Piyersquos opponent Tefnakht is onlyever referred to by the title ldquoChiefrdquo A ruler with full pharaonic style called Tef-nakht may be the same man or a second Tefnakht opinion is unsurprisinglydivided Bakenranef who also had full pharaonic style is the sole ruler attrib-uted to Manethorsquos 24th Dynasty and his defeat and death at the hands of Shaba-ka or Shabataka brought the whole of Egypt under Kushite rule The location ofthe kingdom ruled by Iuput is less certain In the eastern Delta the royal linewhich was associated with Per-Bast in the reign of Piye appears to have cometo an end Bakenranef is attested from Tanis and re-used monuments of otherrulers have been excavated there also documented by the Assyrian list ofEgyptrsquos rulers

Finally the evidence albeit relatively limited does indicate that there wassignificant trade between the Kushites the Delta rulers of both Tanis and Saisand the kingdoms and city states of Israel Judah and the Phoenician coast Itwas in the interests of any Egyptian rulers to ensure that these states did not


come under Assyrian domination and hence they would have become involvedin the politics of the region The capabilities and ambitions of the Kushite rulerswere certainly greater than those of the Libyan pharaohs and when they gainedcontrol of all of Egypt their policy seems to have become more active if not ag-gressive

144 Robert G Morkot


Ron E Tappysup1

The Annals of Sargon II and theArchaeology of SamariaRhetorical Claims Empirical Evidence

1 Introduction

The archaeology of Samaria and by extension the political history it reflectshave emerged as vexing topics for those interested in the closing decade of Isra-elite sovereignty over this once grand capital city Improved editions of key As-syrian texts in both hard copy and digital formatssup2 and recent analyses of reliefs

The bulk of this paper first appeared under the title ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samaria To-ward a Dialogue between Texts and Archaeologyrdquo in Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Ar-chaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie WhiteCrawford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jerusalem The WF Albright Institute of Archaeological Researchand the Israel Exploration Society 2007) 258ndash79 I am indebted to the editors and publishers ofthat Festschrift for granting me permission to reprint here a revised version of that article whichbecame the basis for my seminar presentation in Munich Conferences such as the one organizedby Shuichi Hasegawa sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and held atthe Schloss Nymphenburg on 15ndash 17 March 2017 help open the way toward both solving somedifficulties related to this historical period and generating new ideas and questions to considerI am grateful to have been a participant in this stimulating event ndash The following abbreviationsare used in this chapter ANET = James B Pritchard ed Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating tothe Old Testament (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1955) ARAB II = Daniel David Luck-enbill Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia vol II (Chicago IL The University of ChicagoPress 1926) CAD = The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago(Chicago IL University of Chicago Press 1956ndash) SS I = John Winter Crowfoot Kathleen MaryKenyon and Eliezer L Sukenik The Buildings at Samaria (London Palestine ExplorationFund 1942) SS III = John Winter Crowfoot Grace Mary Crowfoot and Kathleen Mary KenyonSamaria-Sebaste III The Objects (London Palestine Exploration Fund 1957) To printed volumes that have appeared since Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian and BabylonianChronicles (Locust Valley NY Augustin 1975 repr Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2000) addHayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Editions with Intro-ductions Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities1994) Alan R Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-As-syrian Text Corpus Project 1994) Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (Goumlt-tingen Cuvillier Verlag 1994) Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Ti-glath-Pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona LakeIN Eisenbrauns 2011) For relevant materials from the years following the fall of Samaria (Sen-nacherib) see Eckart Frahm Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften (Wien Institut fur Orientalis-

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-008

and epigraphs from the Assyrian palacessup3 have supplemented a wave of renewedinterest in the period spanning the years 732ndash720 BCE⁴ Yet a perusal of the re-sultant publications reveals the absence of any consensus regarding the histor-ical particulars that led to Samariarsquos decline Moreover uncertainties surround-ing the archaeology of Samaria have compromised the success of these text-based studies in reaching firm conclusions founded on data drawn from differ-ent but mutually essential disciplines A recent detailed investigation into thearchaeology of this site⁵ however now allows for a productive interdisciplinaryeffort to settle some of the historical and linguistic questions that remain

One such question concerns the sequence and nature of Assyriarsquos militaryactivities against Samaria during the reigns of Shalmaneser V and Sargon IIWhat precisely does the Babylonian Chronicle (1i28) mean when it says of Shal-

tik der Universitat 1997) plus Albert Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny The Royal Inscriptions ofSennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681 BC) Part 1 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2012) AlbertKirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681BC) Part 2 (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2014) For excellent digital resources see the toolsnow available in the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Online (httporaccmuseumupennedurinapindexhtml) and other references cited in the ldquoat-a-glancerdquoglossaries for the corpora of Tiglath-pileser III Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal presented inJamie Novotny ldquoThe Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V An At-a-GlanceGlossary of the RINAP 1 Corpusrdquo SAAB 19 (2011ndash 12) 1ndash27 id ldquoThe Royal Inscriptions of Esar-haddon An At-a-Glance Glossary of the RINAP 4 Corpusrdquo SAAB 19 (2011ndash 12) 29ndash86 id ldquoTheRoyal Inscriptions of Sennacherib An At-a-Glance Glossary of the RINAP 3 Corpusrdquo SAAB 20(2013ndash 14) 79ndash 129 See eg Pauline Albenda The Palace of Sargon King of Assyria Monumental Wall Reliefs atDur-Sharrukin from Original Drawings Made at the Time of their Discovery in 1843ndash 1844 by Bottaand Flandin (Paris Recherche sur les Civilisations 1986) Christopher B F Walker ldquoThe Epi-graphsrdquo in Pauline Albenda The Palace of Sargon King of Assyria 107ndash 14 Ruth JacobyldquoThe Representation and Identification of Cities on Assyrian Reliefsrdquo IEJ 41 (1991) 112ndash31Norma Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukin and Sargon IIrsquos Western CampaignsrdquoTA 21 (1994) 255ndash75 After the groundbreaking article by Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon II of AssurrdquoJCS 12 (1958) 33ndash40 the principal studies include Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Backgroundto the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)rdquo Bib 71 (1990) 206ndash25 John H Hayes and Jeffrey K KuanldquoThe Final Years of Samaria (730ndash720 BC)rdquo Bib 72 (1991) 153ndash81 Bob Becking The Fall of Sa-maria An Historical and Archaeological Summary (Leiden Brill 1992) Gershon Galil ldquoThe LastYears of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of Samariardquo CBQ 57 (1995) 52ndash65 Gershon GalilThe Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Leiden Brill 1996) Kyle Lawson Younger JrldquoThe Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 461ndash82 M Christine TetleyldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Reason for Rejecting the Hypothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ64 (2002) 59ndash77 (see also n 19 below) Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria Vol II The Eighth Century BCE (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2001)

148 Ron E Tappy

maneser uruŠa-ma-ra-ʾ-in iḫ-te-pi ldquohe broke (the city of) Samariardquo Or what didthe scribes of Sargon intend when they chose the verbs lamucirc (ldquoto surround hemin or besiegerdquo)⁶ sšapānu (ldquoto devastate flatten or level [as if by flood]rdquo)⁷kašādu (ldquoto conquerrdquo)⁸ racircbu (ldquoto shake make tremblerdquo)⁹ or šalālu (ldquoto carryoff plunder [people or property]rdquo)sup1⁰ to describe his activities against this cityNimrud Prism iv 25ndash41sup1sup1 which delineates more different types of actionsagainst Samaria than any other single text records that Sargon fought againstthe city (maḫāṣu) reckoned (or perhaps ldquodeliveredrdquo) its people property andgods as spoil (manucirc) formed or organized a chariot corp with Israelite chariot-eers and equipment (kaṣāru) resettled or reorganized Israelite deportees in theAssyrian homeland (ṣabātu) increased the population of the city (tacircruatāru hellipugrave-še-meugrave-še-šib = šemucirc[w]ašābu)sup1sup2 by bringing in (erēbu) peoples conqueredelsewhere by his own hands (kišitti ŠUii-ia) appointed his own governor overthe reorganized city (šakānu) and counted all the affected individuals as citizens

The Great Summary Inscription (or Die Groszlige Prunkinschrift) ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sar-gons II 197 l 23 (trans ARAB II sect 55 Becking The Fall of Samaria 26) The Bull Inscription (or Die Inschrift auf den Stierkolossen) ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II63 l 21 (trans ARAB II sect 92 Becking The Fall of Samaria 33 = ldquoto usurprdquo) The Great Summary Inscription ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 197 l 23 (trans ARAB IIsect 2 Becking The Fall of Samaria 26) the Palace Doors Inscription IV (or SchwelleninschriftNo 4) ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 261 ll 31ndash32 (trans ARAB II sect 99 Becking TheFall of Samaria 27) the Annals ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 87ndash89 l 14 (trans ARAB IIsect 4 ANET 284 Becking The Fall of Samaria 37) Note also the use of kašādu in the CylinderInscription (or Die Inschrift auf den Tonzylindern l 20) as a generic reference to the conquestof various peoples (the Tamudi Ibadidi Marsimani and Hayapacirc) whom Sargon resettled inthe region of Samaria The Cylinder Inscription ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 34 l 19 (trans ARAB II sect 118Becking The Fall of Samaria 32 = ldquoto subjugaterdquo) for similar content in the Annals compareFuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 110 ll 120ndash23 trans ARAB II sect 17) The Small Summary Inscription (or Die Kleine Prunkinschrift) ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sar-gons II 76 l 15 (trans ARAB II sect 80 ANET 285 Becking The Fall of Samaria 27ndash28 = ldquoto plun-derrdquo) the Annals ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 87ndash9 l 15 (trans ARAB II sect 4 ANET 284Becking The Fall of Samaria 37 = ldquoto plunderrdquo) The Nimrud Prism D (= ND 2601+3401+3417) and E (= ND 3400+3402+3408+3409) ― CyrilJohn Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954) 179ndash80 col ivll 37ndash39 (trans Becking The Fall of Samaria 28ndash30 compare the Annals in Fuchs Die Inschrif-ten Sargons II 88 l 16) For a discussion of which pair of verbs best fits the context see Stephanie Dalley ldquoForeignChariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon IIrdquo Iraq 47 (1985) 36 Dal-ley chooses the latter readings


of Assyria (manucirc)sup1sup3 But do any of these terms imply a physical destruction ofthe capitalrsquos infrastructure as most scholars have traditionally presumed Toreach a credible answer to these inquiries one must assess the textual evidenceagainst a backdrop provided by the actual archaeological record and vice-versaNo study to date has pursued this symbiotic strategy as its principal method

This investigation then evaluates the compatibility of the textual and ar-chaeological evidence by proceeding on two distinct but related levels First itdraws from the rich and varied language of conquest attested in eight majortexts (especially the annalistic records) of Sargon II to describe his military tac-tics and feats against a host of cities and towns A survey of semantic roots usedby Assyrian scribes allows a fresh evaluation of the terminology relating specif-ically to Samaria for which the catalogue of terms seems noticeably conservativein scope compared to the claims relating to other capital cities Following an ex-ploration of Sargonrsquos battle rhetoric the study examines several key but repre-sentative stratigraphic contexts in the archaeological record from Samaria Theresult shows an appreciable degree of harmony between descriptions in the As-syrian texts and the depositional history of the site itself a fact that enhancesour understanding of the cityrsquos final days

Such an enquiry uncovers perhaps a certain paradox between the two prin-cipal disciplines involved (broadly defined as textual studies and archaeology)At least when it comes to the late history of Israelite Samaria it seems that tex-tual scholars often approach the pertinent biblical passages disassemble theminto their smallest discernible parts evaluate the sources behind and historicalcredibility of each part and more often than not ultimately deem the receivedtext with which they started a mere contrivance a compilation so riddled withhistoriographic pitfalls that it can tell us little to nothing about what actuallyhappened as the Israelite capital slowly collapsed Archaeologists on the otherhand suffer from the opposite hermeneutical hardship They seldom begin witha body of evidence that even purports to represent a complete logical under-standable accurate entity Consequently they struggle with myriad bits of rawdata that require detailed analysis and systemization as a first step toward deriv-ing any credible interpretation Rather than commencing with a whole though per-haps heavily redacted entity (such as a final text) that over the course of close in-spection often breaks down into discordant parts archaeologists who retrieve and

For other references to Samaria or the House (Dynasty) of Omri by Sargon II see (a) theAššur Charter ― Henry W F Saggs ldquoHistorical Texts and Fragments of Sargon II of AssyriaI The lsquoAššur Charterrsquordquo Iraq 37 (1975) 11ndash20 l 20 (trans ARAB II sect 133ndash35 Becking The Fallof Samaria 34ndash35) and (b) the Annals ― Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 87ndash89 ll 11 25(trans ARAB II sect 4 ANET 284 Becking The Fall of Samaria 37)

150 Ron E Tappy

study material culture typically begin by facing a debris field of fragmentary datafrom which they must reconstruct or at least extrapolate coherent patterns thatlend themselves to further comparative analysis In short it has been my obser-vation that higher critical biblical scholars tend to be splitters while archaeolo-gists― commonly and in one sense correctly charged with engaging in a ldquodestruc-tive sciencerdquo ― labor to be joiners the methodologies range from intentionaldeconstruction on the one side to attempted reconstruction on the other But cer-tainly the interpretative challenges are legion on both sides Neither texts (whetherbiblical or cuneiform) nor artifacts are above or beyond interpretation a fact thatwill raise pertinent questions throughout each of the two-staged discussion thatfollows

2 The Fall of Samaria and the Fallout fromScholarship

The official excavation reports on the work of the Joint Expedition in 1932ndash 1934and the British Expedition in 1935 typically exhibit a great deal of certainty re-garding the chronology of nearly all phases of occupation at Samaria Withinthis context of confidence the two dates most highly touted as fixed beyondany reasonable doubt consist in the terminus post quem of Kenyonrsquos ldquoPeriod Irdquoand the terminus ante quem of ldquoPeriod Vrdquo According to the report the destruc-tion of the so-called Period V House and the contents of the associated Pit i stemdirectly from the assault against the city by the Assyrians around 720 BCEsup1⁴ Inboth the official report and a subsequent popular account of Samariarsquos historyKenyon referred to the ldquoextensive destructionrdquo of the site by Sargon IIsup1⁵ and as-serted that the archaeological record provided eloquent testimony to ldquothe com-plete destruction of the capital cityrdquosup1⁶

Judging from the archaeological reporting by the excavators themselvesthen one might logically expect to find a single substantial destruction levelat Samaria with the pottery-bearing loci situated in clearly datable and primarystratigraphic contextssup1⁷ Archaeologists working at sites in Syria-Palestine and

SS I 107ndash 108 SS III 199 Kathleen Mary Kenyon Royal Cities of the Old Testament (New York Schocken 1971) 133 The excavation director however recognized the compromised nature of many of these de-posits For example see Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 175ndash76 for a discussionof the differing assessments by Crowfoot and Kenyon of the levels assigned to Period V For an-


the Aegean world responded with uncritical approval both to Kenyonrsquos historicalevaluation of Period V and to her suggested terminal date for its depositional his-torysup1⁸ It is essential then to determine whether a coherent destruction level ex-ists somewhere in Periods VndashVII at Samaria that might correlate to an Assyrianassault during the closing decade of Israelite sovereignty there

Unlike the certainty of interpretations based on the archaeological reportsbiblical and cuneiform studies have failed to produce clear or consistent resultswith regard to Assyriarsquos actions at Samaria Among other limitations no consen-sus has emerged regarding even the number let alone the character of Assyrianmilitary campaigns against the Israelite capital Rather than seeing a singlemajor conflagration at Samaria as did the excavators literary analysts varywidely in the number of physical assaults against the city they purport to readin the Assyrian records

A series of studies in the 1990ssup1⁹ took issue with Hayim Tadmorrsquos articlesup2⁰ inwhich he rejected earlier views holding that the section of the BabylonianChronicle relating to Shalmaneser V referred not to Samaria but to some othercitysup2sup1 or that Shalmaneser alone conquered Samaria and exiled the Israelitessup2sup2or that Shalmaneser simply began the siege of Samaria in 724 while Sargon fin-

other example of interpretative tension in the written comments of the excavators see TappyThe Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 491ndash92 regarding the so-called Ivory HousePalace ofKing Ahab One analyst even declared that Period V represented one of three occupational phases at Sa-maria to which ldquoabsolute dates may be assignedrdquo (John S Holladay Ninth and Eighth CenturyPottery from Northern Palestine [unpublished ThD diss Harvard University Cambridge MA1966] 60 emphasis added) Holladay included Period III (1966 60ndash65) Period V (196665ndash77) and the deposit in Pit i (1966 67ndash79) in his catalogue of precisely datable pottery peri-ods at Samaria Contrast however his subsequent comments on pp 65 and 131 Cited in n 4 above As a prelude to these articles see Antti Laato ldquoNew Viewpoints on theChronology of the Kings of Judah and Israelrdquo ZAW 98 (1986) 210ndash21 and Jeremy Hughes Se-crets of the Times Myths and History in Biblical Chronology (Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press1990) Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon II of Assurrdquo Hugo Winckler ldquoNachtragrdquo ZA 2 (1887) 351ndash52 Albert T Olmstead ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo AJSL 21 (190405) 179ndash82 also more recentlyWilliam W Hallo ldquoFrom Qarqar to Carchemish Assyria and Israel in the Light of New Discov-eriesrdquo BA 23 (1960) 34ndash61 Alfred Jepsen ldquoNoch einmal zur israelitisch-juumldischen Chronolo-gierdquo VT 18 (1968) 31ndash46 Julian Reade ldquoMesopotamian Guidelines for Biblical ChronologyrdquoSMS 4 (1981) 1ndash9 Edwin R Thiele The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Grand RapidsMI Kregel 1994 rev edition) Hughes Secrets of the Times

152 Ron E Tappy

ished it in the first year of his rule (72221)sup2sup3 Instead Tadmor formulated theldquoTwo-Conquest Hypothesisrdquo which held that Shalmaneser besieged the city in723ndash722 but that Sargon ultimately ldquoconqueredrdquo it in his first western campaignin 720 BCE (rather than in his accession year)

More recent investigations have offered various alternative proposals drawnsolely from each readerrsquos own understanding of the biblical and cuneiform textsA thorough critique of the multifarious arguments of each study is unnecessaryhere since concise summaries of recent scholarship are availablesup2⁴ In his sur-vey Gershon Galil presents the various studies in order of their appearancewhile Kyle Lawson Younger Jr groups the studies according to interpretive sim-ilarities Here I need only note that Nadav Narsquoamansup2⁵ argues for at least three As-syrian assaults against Samaria (with minimal physical damage to the city) dur-ing the penultimate decade of the eighth century BCEsup2⁶ Hayes and Kuan on theother hand believe that Samaria submitted to Assyrian pressure (as a result ofstated or implied military operations) on no fewer than four occasions duringthe 720ssup2⁷ In two separate publications Galilsup2⁸ suggested that Samaria remainedloyal to Assyria until 723 BCE when Shalmaneser V invaded the northern king-dom conquered its outlying cities and arrested Hoshea (Babylonian Chronicle2Kgs 175) The cityrsquos ministers and officers ran the government for the next twoand a half years without appointing a new king With a limited Assyrian forcedeployed at Samaria the broad-scale siege became a blockade of the capitalcity that resembled the unfolding of events at Tyre This uneasy situation contin-ued until 720 BCE when Sargon II finally conquered the city and initiated a re-settlement of foreign populations theresup2⁹

Julius Lewy Die Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda (Giessen Toumlpelmann 1927) Sig-mund Mowinckel ldquoDie Chronologie der israelitischen und juumldischen Koumlnigerdquo AcOr 10 (1932)161ndash277 William Foxwell Albright ldquoThe Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of IsraelrdquoBASOR 100 (1945) 16ndash22 more recently Knud Tage Andersen ldquoNoch einmal Die Chronologieder Koumlnige von Israel und Judardquo SJOT 3 (1989) 1ndash45 Galil ldquoThe Last Yearsrdquo Younger ldquoThe Fall of Samariardquo Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samariardquo Believing that the evidence shows only a partial destruction of Samaria Galil ldquoThe LastYears of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 59 countered this position by noting ldquoit is difficult to imaginethat Samaria escaped total destruction despite the fact that three campaigns [would] have beendirected against it in a period of less than eight yearsrdquo Hayes and Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samariardquo Galil ldquoThe Last Yearsrdquo Galil The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah In my judgment it seems possible that Shalmaneser V had earlier employed the tacticalstrategy of a city-wide blockade at Samaria Although 2Kgs 171ndash6 appears heavily redactedand therefore quite compromised in its ability to shed clear light onto history the final recensionof the text (even if composite in nature) might actually preserve some memory of a series of un-


Younger also sees two military campaigns against Samaria with the first oc-curring in 722 BCE (during Hoshearsquos ninth year) under Shalmaneser V (2Kgs 1761810) and the second coming after Sargonrsquos defeat of the anti-Assyrian coalitionat Qarqar in 720 BCE Following this victory Sargon moved very rapidly andbriefly against Samaria before proceeding to sites farther south (eg Raphia)While Narsquoaman wondered how Samaria if so weakened under its prolongedsiege and capture by Shalmaneser V could face Sargonrsquos army already in 720with any respectable fighting force or resistance Younger argued the case fromthe opposite direction For him the physical and political spoilation of Samarialate in the reign of Shalmaneser V becomes not the historical problem but thehistorical reason why Sargonrsquos raid could proceed with such swiftness and deci-siveness and allow him to move southward so soon after his foray through theEphraimite hill countrysup3⁰

Focusing attention more on the regnal chronologies of Hoshea and Hezekiahthan on the Assyrian texts Tetley infers at least two major campaigns against Sa-maria by Tiglath-pileser III already in 733ndash32sup3sup1 and 727 (2Kgs 166) According toTetley the latter year marks the accession of Hoshea to the Israelite throneWhileShalmaneser V again ldquoravagedrdquo Samaria around 723 BCE the protracted three-

happy encounters between this Assyrian king and the king and people of Samaria If so thedeteriorating relationship appears to have unfolded in at least three stages First Samariawas brought under vassal status and charged with tribute duties ( החנמולבשיודבעעשוהול־יהיו v 3) Later after a breach in payments the city was quarantined (ldquoenclosedrdquo) and its king im-prisoned (Note the alliterative רסא hellip רצע v 4 cf Akkadian esēru which Sennacherib used inrelation to Jerusalem) As in the previous verse these two terms do not constitute a simple re-dundancy rather they may once again allude to a two-tiered development More than connotingjust the arrest and incarceration of Hoshea the two actions could signal the initial ldquorestraininghindering or shutting up (as in lsquohemming inrsquo)rdquo of the scope of Hoshearsquos territorial rule followedby his own house arrest These developments constitute the tipping point not only in the pas-sage as it now stands but also in the sustainability of Samaria as capital A blockade of thestill unfallen city would allow the Assyrians a free hand throughout the region of Samaria( ץראה־לכב v 5) During this period the capital itself lay under constant guard with its king im-prisoned At this point Shalmaneser might easily have employed the metaphor used later bySennacherib for Hoshea was indeed penned up ldquolike a bird in a cagerdquo Finally in the third stra-tegic state and undoubtedly after significant damage to infrastructure across the kingdom Shal-maneser V completed the conquest of Samaria ( דכל ~ ḫepucirc) and initiated his deportation of itscitizens ( הלג v 6) Samariarsquos weakened state may also argue for its relatively minor role in the Qarqar coalitiona fact reflected in its last-place listing in all the Assyrian sources and possibly also in the depic-tions on the palace reliefs (see Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukinrdquo 255ndash75) Cf Assyrian Eponym Chronicles edited by Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 2Kgs1529

154 Ron E Tappy

year siege did not occur until 721 to 71918 BCE during Sargonrsquos rule This pro-posal therefore rejects Tadmorrsquos double-conquest theory but devises a similarscenario for Tiglath-pileser III with additional military efforts orchestrated byShalmaneser V and Sargon II Yet the thesis depends on two questionable ac-tions (1) retaining the old Di- reading at the beginning of the place name inthe AEC entry for 728 BCE and (2) restoring the missing place name in theAEC entry for 727 with ldquoto Damascusrdquo Neither premise is convincingsup3sup2

In sum these and other studies generally agree that Samaria faced a seriesof attacks by more than one Assyrian leader and that the cityrsquos trouble culminat-ed in a final major assault led by Sargon II in 720 BCE All investigators seem toaccept that both Shalmaneser V and Sargon II participated in the ultimate de-cline of the city yet they rearrange andor redate specific episodes within theconquest sequence and often see an increased number of military confrontationsearly in the 720s All the studies tend to accept one crucial fact however manytimes the Assyrians approached the capital at Samaria the imperial army physi-cally destroyed the city at some point (if not multiple times) From this burgeon-ing corpus of literary studies then one might expect to find one or more destruc-tion levels in the archaeology of Samaria while the official excavation reportespoused a single wholesale debris layer from this period Most of these textualstudies however fail to distinguish between literary references to Samaria thecity and notices of Samaria the region Similarly none addresses directly andsystematically the different Akkadian terms used to describe the military actionsof the Assyrian kings

Tetley must still accept Smithrsquos old reading of Di- over Millardrsquos new reading alḪi- as the be-ginning of the place name in the entry for the year 728 George Smith ldquoOn a New Fragment ofthe Assyrian Canon Belonging to the Reigns of Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneserrdquo Transactionsof the Society of Biblical Archaeology 2 (1873) 321ndash22 Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Em-pire 59 Tetleyrsquos claim that the entry must ldquoremain uncertainrdquo since it is ldquopartly illegiblerdquo (TetleyldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fallrdquo 67) is misleading Millardrsquos transliteration is in fact derived notfrom a reconstructed text but from a witness in which the determinative and first letter of theplace name are clear (Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 45) Thus the readingseems more secure than Tetley allows and it poses a serious obstacle to her confident rejectionof the current understanding of Tiglath-pileserrsquos activities in the west


3 The Language of Conquest in the Annalsof Sargon II

Drawing from the Annals of Sargon II I have assembled a study sample of 327literary references (mostly verbs) to represent the language of conquest chosenby this king to describe his military tactics and feats against a host of citiesand townssup3sup3 Working with this broad dataset helps to place the description ofevents at Samaria in a much wider literary (if not historical) context Whereasonly one verb (ḫepucirc) occurs in Mesopotamian sources in conjunction with Shal-maneser Vrsquos actions against Samaria Sargon IIrsquos scribes used thirteen differentsemantic roots spread over eight major texts to portray his relations with thiscitysup3⁴ On at least two occasions in the Annals (ll 209 391a) Sargon himself em-ploys the term ḫepucirc but never in connection to his maneuvers at Samaria Thesample also shows that Sargon varied his terminology relating to the Israelitecapital Of the thirteen verbal roots he used only three more than once andonly one of the three occurred multiple times (šalālu appears twice as doesmanucirc kašādu however appears five times) The principal concept that setsforth Sargonrsquos activities at Samaria then centers on the term kašādu

The nuanced meanings of this term illustrate an important hermeneuticalprincipal that will apply to virtually all the Assyrian verbs cited in this studyAs seen in the glossaries published by Novotnysup3⁵ kašādu can mean ldquoto conquerto arriverdquo (in the texts of Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V) ldquoto arrive reachcapture conquer catch up withrdquo (Sennacherib) or ldquoto arrive reach conquerachieverdquo (Esarhaddon) Modern translations of battlefield texts from the Neo-As-syrian kings consistently render kašādu as simply ldquoto conquerrdquo and that defini-tion proves an adequate one for the present investigation But nothing in thegreater semantic range of kašādu inherently implies a physical destruction ofa targeted city Thus while I will often provide a basic definition (and as neededalternative translations) for Assyrian words as they appear in the following sec-tion a full lexical study of those terms would not alter to any appreciable degreethe argument of each section or the overall thesis as outlined above and devel-

The sample is based on the transliteration in Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 86ndash181ll 1ndash424 (cf ARAB II sectsect 4ndash47) and all references follow his lineation Fuchs collated his num-bering system with those of both Hugo Winckler Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons nach den Papierab-klatschen und Originalen neu herausgegeben Indash II (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1889) and Arthur G Lie TheInscriptions of Sargon II King of Assyria Part I The Annals (Paris Geuthner 1929) See above Introduction For references see above n 2

156 Ron E Tappy

oped throughout the paper One could say that Sargon either ldquoarrived atrdquo orldquoconqueredrdquo Samaria without substantially altering my discussion Ratherthan the variant meanings of individual verbs then the fact that virtually allthe Neo-Assyrian kings used this same catalogue of terms and the idioms inwhich they were embedded raises a more vital hermeneutical concern if thebulk of these expressions reflects merely propagandistic rhetoric that was in cur-rent standard usage throughout the duration of the Neo-Assyrian empire whatcredible history can we draw from them It is well known that historiographicissues plague the cuneiform sources as well as the biblical recordssup3⁶ The pur-pose of this paper therefore aims to examine the ways in which the Assyriankings (Sargon in particular) chose to present themselves in the literary recordsthey commissioned and then to evaluate the historical veracity of those self-de-pictions against the physical remains from Samaria

I have divided the Assyrian terms in my overall study sample into five broadcategories In categories 2 and 3 the discussion includes various sub-categories

Category 1

The first set of terms describes Sargonrsquos preparation for and procession to battlethe start of siege operations and various symbolic actions (such as the offeringof sacrifices) conducted at the successful completion of an operation The ac-tions extend from basic maneuvers to the more serious outset of a siege As per-haps expected the verbs alāku (ldquoto gordquo Gtn ldquoto marchrdquo) and šapāru (ldquoto dis-patch [an army]rdquo) appear most often in this list but still not frequently (7timesalāku 4times šapāru) The term lemucirc (ldquoto besiegerdquo) also denotes the beginning ofa siege and Sargon applied this concept to Samaria in the Great Summary In-scription Interestingly the kings whose reigns sandwiched that of Sargon ―from Tiglath-pileser III to Esarhaddon ― apparently did not use this term tosignal the start of an assault On two separate occasions relating to his prepara-tions against Marduk-apla-iddina (Merodach-baladan) of Babylon (ll 264 329)Sargon says akṣura ušmanni ldquoI set (constructed) my camp in orderrdquosup3⁷ In Nimrud

See especially the works of Tadmor cited above also Hayim Tadmor ldquoObservations on As-syrian Historiographyrdquo in Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of Jacob Joel Finkelsteined Maria de Jong Ellis (Hamden CT Archon Books 1977) 209ndash 13 Adam Zertal ldquoThe Heart of the Monarchy Patterns of Settlement and Historical Considera-tions of the Israelite Kingdom of Samariardquo in Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israeland Jordan ed Amihai Mazar (Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press 2001) 38ndash64 esp 57ndash58proposed the identification of an Assyrian military camp at the site of el-Qarsquoadeh located


Prism IV 34 the same verb (kaṣāru) describes Sargonrsquos integration (ldquogatheringrdquoor ldquoorganizingrdquo) of 200 conscripted Israelite chariots or perhaps charioteersinto his royal force A number of other words occur in this category but usuallyno more than one or two times each

Category 2

The second class of terms includes generic references to various levels of the de-feat andor subjugation of a city though the physical destruction of property isgenerally not mentioned in the same context I have grouped these words underfive sub-headings

Sub-category 21

Some terms represent general references to the political collapse of cities orlands The verb kašādu (ldquoto conquerrdquo) or various expressions based on the deriv-ative kišittu (eg kišitti qātī[šu]-ia Aššur PN ldquothe conquest of my own hands of Aššur of a specified place namerdquo) clearly constitute the most widely usedconcept within this group Such instances occur at least 38 times in the studysample A parallel phrase ina qātī uṣabbit ldquoI capturedseized [the cavalry ofUrsacirc the Urartean] with my own handrdquo) also appears (l 134) The Annals employtwo verbs šakānu (ll 326 385) and maḫāṣu (l 290) in idiomatic usage withdabducirc to denote a general defeat or more specifically the bloody massacre ofan army in pitched battle The implication seems clear the enemy was foughthit beaten and the defeat (dabducirc) was establishedput in place But again nei-ther term refers unequivocally to the demolition of urban architecture Sargonalso sometimes referred metaphorically to his victories through such images asldquoI enveloped or overwhelmedrdquo (saḫāpu) like a storm (ll 69 296) with a net(ll 86 421) or with the splendor of Aššur (l 165) On one occasion the scribesused kamucirc with the phrase kīma tibūt aribicirc (ldquoI capturedoverwhelmed like aswarm of locustsrdquo ― with aribicirc[ldquolocustsrdquo] stemming from erbu) as a trenchantsynonym for both kašādu and saḫāpu a situation that extends Sargonrsquos actions

only 10 km northeast of Samaria and his suggestion that the camp served to support the siege ofSamaria in 722 BCE remains somewhat tentative since the majority of pottery from the site ap-parently dates to the late Iron Age and Persian periods

158 Ron E Tappy

to the defeatkilling (dacircku) of citizens and the physical destruction of their cap-ital by fire (šarāpu ldquoto burnrdquo ll 86ndash87 see below category no 5)

Sub-category 22

At least two verbs relate directly to the deposition or subjugation of local leaders(nakāru ldquoto changerdquo and kanāšu ldquoto make [someone] bow downrdquo ll 244 and391 respectively)

Sub-category 23

Various phrases describe psychological tactics employed by the Assyrians someof which prompted self-destructive acts by enemy forces or towns In such in-stances gloomsup3⁸ is cast (naducirc l 190) and tortures are established (šakānull 163 306) as great mourning grips the entire land (bašucirc l 162) Hapless sub-jects must seize the hand or feet of Sargon (ṣabātu ll 272d 284 286b 294 300)or even kiss his feet (nasāqu l 287) They may suffer having their own handsburned (qamucirc l 238) or pierced (paṭāru l 347 cf ldquoto inciserdquo) exposure to pub-lic gaze (kullumu ldquoto show or revealrdquo l 238) or parching thirst (ṣabātu nowwith laplaptu ll 283ndash84) In extreme cases panic so ldquofalls uponoverwhelmsrdquothe leaders or people that they can no longer coherently identify even thecause of their fear (maqātu l 307) and they may begin to lay waste to theirown property (ēdurūma ušaḫribu lt ḫarābu l 293) attempt to hide themselvesby ldquocrawlingrdquo to the farthest corners of distant mountains (raqātu l 303) oreven end (ldquofinishrdquo) their own life as did Ursacirc of Urarṭu (napišta[zi]-šu iq-ti ltqatucirc l 165)

Sub-category 24

Certain terms connote the results of economic hardships imposed by Sargon onspecific cities such as his allowing the Assryian army to eat (akālu l 289) or cutdown (kašāṭu ll 290 358) local orchards to cut the date palms (nakāsu l 358)sup3⁹

ARAB II sect 23 the Akkadian term akukūtu is ldquoa poetic synonym for firerdquo though it can alsodenote a rare and ominous red glow in the sky see CAD A1 285a The Annals apply this same term to people in l 349 In the Gtn Stem nakāsu means ldquotobreach repeatedlyrdquo


and to enclose (that is blockade) the capital city (esēru l 357)⁴⁰ as the devasta-tion occurs in the outlying kingdom⁴sup1 (see below)

Sub-category 25

The final subset of words in this group denotes the killing of people or enemytroops though again these terms typically appear without further reference tothe physical destruction of the towns inhabited by these individuals The twomost common verbs in this class include dacircku (ldquoto defeat killrdquo ll 87 131 134387a) and maqātu (Š = ldquoto cut downrdquo ll 122⁴sup2 168 376) both of which basicallymean ldquoto killrdquo⁴sup3 Less frequently the scribes used stronger terms such as napāṣu(ldquoto massacre slaughterrdquo l 344) šaqāru (ldquoto decimaterdquo l 346 D = ldquotopiercerdquo⁴⁴) nakāsu (ldquoto cut downoffrdquo in the sense of ldquoto slaughterrdquo l 349) orsalāḫu (ldquoto sprinkle or bespatter with the venom of deathrdquo l 350⁴⁵) conceptswhich they set against the rare occurrence of bulluṭu (lt balāṭu ldquoto spare [some-onersquos life]rdquo l 387b)

Category 3

The third group of conquest terminology describes the reorganization of subju-gated areas and like the previous group incorporates a number of sub-areas

The term ṣabātu may also appear in reference to the blockading or sealing of borders as inthe case of Muški and Urarṭu (Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 128 l 219 ARAB II sect 27) In certain instances such as Tiglath-pileser III at Damascus in 733 BCE and Sennacherib atthe gates of Jerusalem in 701 Assyrian leaders may have appealed to their blockade of a city ldquoasa face-saving device to cover for a failure to take the enemyrsquos capital and punish the rebelliouskingrdquo (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 79 n 11rsquo) This passage claims that after the slaughter Sargon deported the surviving remnant and re-settled them in Samaria (see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 320) Compare also necircru in l 320 Both necircru and dacircku sometimes appear in conjunction withkašādu Sargon claims to have pierced the hand of an enemy with an arrow just as the enemy man-aged to slip away ldquolike a mongoose through the gate of his cityrdquo (Fuchs Die Inschriften SargonsII 334) See CAD I 139ndash40 for a discussion of imat mūti ldquopoisonous foam [or] slaver produced fromthe mouths of angry gods demons humans and animalsrdquo

160 Ron E Tappy

Sub-category 31

To recognize the installation of a new ruler (either a local citizen or an Assyrianofficial) on a recently subdued throne Sargon most often employed the basicverb šakānu ldquoto put place setrdquo or ldquoto establish depositrdquo (ll 204 340 245254 276 386b 409) He also caused someone to rise to a throne (Š-stem of [w]ašābu ldquoto make occupyrdquo) assigned a specific person to rule over an area ([w]acircru D = ldquoto commissionrdquo l 386b) or commanded (lit ldquospokerdquo) a new rulerinto power (qabucirc ll 183 409)

Sub-category 32

In addition to sparing the deportation or even the life of a subordinate (seebalāṭu above also l 272a) Sargon sometimes presented other incentives tolocal rulers by offering them cities (šarāku ltin broken contextgt and nadānul 198) increasing the area under their control (rabucirc l 198) and forgiving or dis-regarding their misdeeds (mecircšu l 272e) Following Sargon Sennacherib certain-ly employed the first two strategies by transferring cities and towns captured inthe Shephelah of Judah to the control of Philistine kings at Ashdod Ekron andGaza⁴⁶

Sub-category 33

When recording local cities that Sargon considered to be Assyrian property or theoccupants of those cities whom he reckoned as actual Assyrians the Annals typ-ically resort to the common notion of ldquocountingrdquo (manucirc 14 occurrences in thestudy sample) To facilitate this status Sargon regularly gathered people togetherunder a ruler (paḫāru l 197) ldquoled them awayrdquo to bring them within the Assyrianborder (abāku l 281) ― that is within the boundary marked by a kudurru-stone― and made or ldquoinstalledrdquo them as vassals of Aššur (emēdu tupšikki Aššurll 204 423)

Ron E Tappy ldquoHistorical and Geographical Notes on the lsquoLowland Districtsrsquo of Judah in Josh-ua 1533ndash47rdquo VT 58 (2008) 381ndash403


Sub-category 34

Sargonrsquos treatment of the provincial capitals of Sippar Nippur Babylon andBorsippa⁴⁷ provides a sequence of actions through which he generally reorgan-ized local people or land holdings The Annals set this treatment in stark contrastto the devastation laid on the city of Dūr-Yakīn In the case of the capital citiesSargon claims to have broken or ldquodestroyedrdquo their bonds (abātu) freed the peo-ple (lit ldquoallowed them to see the light of dayrdquo note the idiom nūra kullumu withkullumu D = ldquoto showrdquo Š = ldquoto revealrdquo) returned their fields to them (eṭēru) re-turned the territories taken away from them by the Sutians ([w]uttura lt atāruagain lit ldquoincreasedrdquo their domains) reestablished the independence of theiraffiliated cities (šakānu) returned the images of their captured gods and re-stored (ldquoincreasedrdquo) the revenues of these deities ([w]uttura lt atāru) On theother hand the area of Bīt-Yakīn (which included Dūr-Yakīn) he ldquototally dividedrdquo(malmališ zacirczu l 383) as far as the Elamite border After Sargon the scribes ofSennacherib used the concept of dividing (zacirczu) to refer to the distribution ofenemy booty to the military Assyrian governors and leaders of Assyrian culticcentersWhile Esarhaddon used the term when reassigning skilled soldiers char-ioteers shepherds orchard keepers and the like to Assyrian service he also at-tached a greater territorial sense to the term in his claims that he occasionallydivided a particular land ldquoin its entiretyrdquo (si-ḫir-ti-šaacute a reference to its entire cir-cumferenceperimeter) into two parts over which he placed Assyrian officials asgovernors The Chicago Assyrian Dictionaryrsquos rendering of Sargonrsquos use of mal-mališ⁴⁸ suggests the latter tactic over a simple redistribution of spoils andFuchs also understands the term in that way⁴⁹ This practice of splitting an exist-ing political entity and placing the newly defined parts under different moresympathetic leadership anticipates Sennacheribrsquos wholesale transfer of Judahitepolities to Philistine rulers in 701 BCE

Sub-category 35

The two principal terms that record a resettling of captured peoples in a differentcity are the Š-stems of erēbu (ll 161 214 305) and [w]ašābu (eg ll 78 203 216253 381 409 423) ldquoto make enterrdquo and ldquoto make settlerdquo The last reference

Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 169 ll 373ndash78 ARAB II sect 40 CAD M1 170 Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 335

162 Ron E Tappy

under erēbu (l 305) relates to the occupancy of Dūr-Ladīni by Sargonrsquos warri-ors⁵⁰ In one instance (uacute-še-šib l 123) the Annals apply the term ašābu to thetransfer of various Arab desert tribes to the former capital city of Samaria

Sub-category 36

Local building projects in subdued cities are usually mentioned by way of theverb naducirc (eg ll 216 219 283) or the phrase ana eššuti ēpuš (epēšu sometimeswritten uacute-še-piš ll 114 305) The terms can appear in connection with a state-ment that Sargon had ldquoconqueredrdquo or ldquocapturedrdquo a certain city (eg note thesequence kašādu hellip epēšu in ll 113ndash 14) but without explicit reference to thephysical destruction of those places The Annals typically employ naducirc to notethe establishment of watch posts along the borders of districts (as in Kammānuin south-central Anatolia just north of Samrsquoal and Carchemish l 216) or prov-inces (Gambūlu in southern Mesopotamia north of Bīt-Yakīn l 283 comparethe situation along the border of the Land of Muški l 219) An alternativeverb for describing the strengthening of border fortresses is danānu as withthe cities along the boundary with Urarṭu (l 218)

Sub-category 37

While this category relates in various ways to the last three sets of terms the fol-lowing words refer more specifically to the administrative takeover and reorgan-ization of foreign cities In fact this section constitutes the aspect of conquestthat the Annals most often address with regard to actions taken within a certaincity As demonstrated in the previous subset building projects that receive men-tion typically relate to the strengthening and fortification of borders the recordsactually say very little about specific inner-city construction projects or the par-ticular uses of buildings the Assyrians themselves may have designed Besidescalling a city by a new name (indicated by the verbs zakāru l 275 nakārull 279 298 or qabucirc l 280 ― ldquoto name change or simply staterdquo) or linking(ldquobindingrdquo) cities together in a larger administrative network (rakāsu l 220)the key term involved here is ṣabātu normally translated ldquoto seizerdquo but in this

On the somewhat awkward wording of ll 304ndash305 in the annalistic record see Peter Du-bovskyacute Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies Reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian Intelligence Servicesand Its Significance for 2 Kings 18ndash 19 (Rome Pontificio Istituto Biblico 2006) 91 n 199


context meaning ldquoto take over for administrative purposesrdquo (or more genericallyldquoto reorganize administrativelyrdquo eg ll 214 215 253 275 297 408 422) Thephrase ana eššūti aṣbat occurs often in the inscriptions of Sargon SennacheribEsarhaddon and Ashurbanipal it typically conveys a new administrative pur-pose behind the control and exploitation of captured towns⁵sup1 Unfortunatelymany older translations obscure this meaning by rendering the phrase simplyas ldquoI builtrebuilt anewrdquo⁵sup2 For example in what appears to represent an unusualturn of events Sargon smashed (ḫepucirc) the provincial capital of Melīdi ldquolike apotrdquo (l 209) while taking over Til-Garimmu a city of lesser status for adminis-trative purposes (l 214) As noted above the typical pattern would reverse thefates of these two locales

Sub-category 38

Finally a few terms occur in this broader category that pertain to the setting ofannual tribute taxes or work assignments Service or more specifically work onlands held by a higher authority (ilkucedilldquostate servicerdquo l 215) as well as vassalage(tupšikku ldquocorveacutee laborrdquo l 215) were imposed (emēdu ll 216 288) on the sub-jects of Sargon Both tax (biltu) and tribute (maddattu) were imposed on thegroups resettled in Samaria ldquoas though they were Assyriansrdquo (ll 16ndash17) ndash aphrase that denotes particularly heavy requirements of tribute⁵sup3 More figurative-ly subjugated peoples must pull (šacircṭu) the rope of Sargonrsquos yoke (abšānu ll 254424)⁵⁴ The Assyrians firmly levied (nadānu or kacircnu ll 277ndash78) annual (šattišam)tribute on their subjects often in the form of interest (a ṣibtu-tax) on cattlesheep and goats (l 288b)

See CAD E 377b CAD Ṣ 16b Cf the appropriate passages in ARAB II sectsect 26 30 33 46 47 Becking The Fall of Samaria 37 n 75 Cf Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon IIPart I Letters from Assyria and the West (Helsinki Helsinki University Press 1987) no 2204ndash5 for the corn tax and for evidence that Samaria sometimes proved delinquent in its paymentof such taxes abšānu a loanword from Sumerian appears only in relation to labor or corveacutee it never de-notes any part of a chariot or other equipment or even routine physical labor (CAD A1 66)

164 Ron E Tappy

Category 4

The fourth type of literary reference in my study sample relates to the direct re-moval by Sargon himself or the indirect receipt by the king of the spoils of warwhich may include people and property The verb that most commonly describesthis action ― šalālu ldquoto carry off plunderrdquo ― occurs at least twenty times in thestudy sample and appears in relation to ldquoSamerina and the entire land of theHouseholdDynasty of Omrirdquo in the Small Summary Inscription from RoomXIV of the palace at Khorsabad (see n 10) The nominal cognate of this root ―šallatu ― also serves as a basic term for the spoils of war (as distinct from mad-dattu ldquotribute paymentrdquo) and it combines with būšu (ldquogoods valuables mova-ble propertyrdquo l 223) to help clarify the intended meaning of šalālu kašādu lequcircetc as acts of plunder not necessarily of destructive violence The Annals some-times record the receipt (using the verb maḫāru) of spoils after stating simplythat Sargon went to battle (alāku ll 128ndash3times 168) or in connection with plunder-ing operations (šalālu l 355ndash2times) or while making post-battle offerings (ll 314316) Less often the record states that Sargon received booty ldquoatafter the defeatrdquoof someone (l 327) and maḫāru is connected with kašādu ldquoto conquerrdquo onlyonce in the sample (l 113) On occasion different series of verbs relate to the re-moval of specific types of goods such as economic or natural resources (egores ― šakālu hellip balālu hellip amāru ll 227ndash32) or military resources (amāru hellipṣabātu hellip [w]ašābu l 279) The conscription of chariots (or charioteers) in the An-nals and the binding together of draft animals employs the term kaṣāru (ll 357411) as at Samaria in Nimrud Prism IV 33ndash34 Sargon considered (lit ldquocount-edrdquo manucirc) these resources as spoils of war along with deportees and apparentcultic images (IV 31ndash3)⁵⁵ At one point (l 408) the official who led the royal armyagainst the provincial capital of Melīdi opened (petucirc) the local treasury (bīt niṣir-ti) and ldquocarried offrdquo the booty to Sargon ([w]abālu compare ll 213 422) Afterreceiving such goods (lit ldquotaking them awayrdquo ekēmu ll 351 387) Sargon storedor heaped them up for his own use (qarānu ~ garānu l 233)

In view of the heavy taxation plundering of military resources and removal of cultic sym-bols imposed on Samaria Hayes and Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samariardquo 178 seem incorrect intheir assertion that during and after the fall of Samaria ldquono special penalties were imposed onthe people and no reference is made to any special booty takenrdquo Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefsat Dur-Sharrukinrdquo 264 has suggested that the upper registers of Slabs 4 and 5 in the Room Vreliefs from Dur-Šarruken actually depict the removal of Samarian booty by Assyrian soldiers


Category 5

Finally and perhaps most significantly for discerning what actually transpired atSamaria the last group of terms in my study sample clearly denotes the physicaldestruction of property in a conquered city Sargonrsquos treatment of uruRapīḫu (Ra-phia) following the battle at Qarqar in 720 BCE provides a prime example of sucha fate This local town was destroyed devastated and burned with fire (ap-pulaq-qur i-na išāti aacuteš-ru-up l 57 lt napālu naqāru and šarāpu) before Sargonclaims to have carried off (aacuteš-lu-la lt šalālu) more than 9000 people alongwith their possessions The Annals make the physical nature of the affrontagainst the city unmistakable

These terms go far beyond the generic sense of ldquoto capturerdquo though they oc-casionally follow and expand that concept in the text For example when the cit-ies of Šuandahul and Durdukka (between the Caspian Sea and Lake Urmia)planned rebellion by prying into affairs in the northern Zagros Mountains ofnorthwestern Iran during Sargonrsquos third palucirc (ll 58ndash67) the king marchedforth (alāku) to conquer (ana kašād) those places Ultimately he smashed (parā-ru) and leveled to the ground (manucirc lit ldquoreckoned them as groundrdquo) and carriedoff (šalālu) their people and possessions Next comes the standard second-levelstatement ldquoThose cities I destroyed (napālu) I devastated (naqāru) I burnedwith fire (ina išāti ašrup lt šarāpu)rdquo⁵⁶ Clearly this triad of terms communicatesmore than mere control subjugation or conquest (kašādu) of a locale Comparethe battle at Dūr-Yakīn in which Sargon besieged the city (lemucirc l 344) thenmassacred and decimated its warriors (ll 344ndash46) pierced the hand of thelocal ruler (l 347) slaughtered various groups of tribesmen (l 349) bespatteredthe citizens with the venom of death (l 350) removed the symbols of indigenouspower (l 351) caused the people to run wild and loose (l 352) plundered andreceived the spoils (ll 353ndash57) completely enclosed (blockaded) the city(l 357) ruined the local economy by cutting down orchards and date palms(l 358) negated the effectiveness of the cityrsquos moat (l 359) and then burnedthe town (this time using the term qamucirc) and demolished (napālu) and devastat-ed (naqāru) its defenses by digging out (nasāḫu) their very foundations The re-sult gave the city the appearance of a denuded mound of ruins after a flood (tīlabūbi l 373) When the loyalty of Mitatti of Zikirtu collapsed during the med-

Annals ll 58ndash65 see Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II 91 (text) 315 (translation)

166 Ron E Tappy

dling of Šuandahul and Durdukka (see above) Sargon even boasted that heburned Mitattirsquos royal city ― Parda ― with divine fire from the god Gibil (l 132)⁵⁷

Once in the study sample Sargon speaks of the destruction (ḫepucirc l 391a) ofMuški a concept that receives metaphoric clarification earlier in the Annalswhen of Melīdi he records karpāniš aḫpi ldquoI smashed it like a potrdquo (l 209)Like the other verbs in this section ḫepucirc also seems to imply the physical dem-olition of a conquered site Though the Babylonian Chronicle (1i28) once attrib-utes this same action to Shalmaneser V in his campaign against Samaria SargonII never employs this word with regard to the Israelite capital

As expected the devastation suggested by these terms leads to deportationsand the removal of the spoils of war addressed earlier But the emphatic state-ments that incorporate these more drastic actions generally do not proceed byspeaking of an administrative reorganization of the town a rebuilding of phys-ical structures resettlement programs the imposition of taxes etc On the otherhand the passages that do include these types of restructuring measures rarelymove beyond kašādu or lemucirc in describing the initial military side of the pictureIn other words the more extreme level of conquest language gives the impres-sion that the city in question suffered complete devastation with little regardto its future either as an independent municipality or as a functional part ofthe Assyrian Empire This fate was not the case at Samaria

Based on the archaeological reporting from Samaria one might expect tofind clear evidence for this type of conflagration both in the sitersquos depositionalhistory and in the historical texts associated with the cityrsquos final days But infact a coherent destruction level does not emerge from the empirical evidencerecovered there and nowhere in the records of Sargon does the graphic languageof destruction occur in relation to the Israelite capital Only in the BabylonianChronicle where ḫepucirc describes Shalmaneser Vrsquos assault against the city canone identify a possible reference to its physical destruction Judging from thetwo occurrences of this term in the later Annals of Sargon it at least impliesmore than a mere plundering Even so ldquoravagerdquo (a popular translation usedby scholars) remains too vague a term in English to ascertain precisely whatthose who resort to this rendering really envision

From this overview of Sargon IIrsquos language of conquest it becomes clear thathis scribes employed a fairly standard vocabulary to describe the various phases

ldquoAmong the troops of Mitatti of Zikirtu I directed a slaughter I conquered three strong [for-tified] cities together with twenty-four towns in their neighborhood and plundered them Iburned down his royal city Parda with the [fire-god] Gibil and that same fellow [Mitatti] fledwith the inhabitants of his landcountry and their abode was not to be foundrdquo See FuchsDie Inschriften Sargons II 111 (text) 320 (translation) Annals ll 130ndash33


and facets of battle and conquest In fact the terminology outlined here provesquite typical of all Neo-Assyrian conquerors in the late-eighth and seventh cen-turies BCE⁵⁸ Yet Sargonrsquos overall use of this catalogue to relay his actions againstSamaria seems noticeably conservative in scope It also appears from this surveythat the treatment routinely afforded the provincial capitals often differed (forthe better) from that given the regular cities⁵⁹ The physical evidence from Sama-ria corroborates this conclusionWhile the Israelite capital was besieged block-aded() heavily taxed and levied with tribute plundered and repopulated itwas not physically destroyed

4 The Archaeology of Periods VndashVII at SamariaWhat it Does and Does Not Reveal

41 Building Period V (Figs 1ndash2)⁶⁰

The complexities of the depositional history encountered north of the maincourtyard presented the Joint Expedition (Fig 1) with various challenges in ach-ieving a tenable reconstruction of the events attending the Assyrian takeover ofthe site The excavation report indicates that floor levels associated with therooms in this area remained intact only north of Wall 65 Leveling operationsfor a thick layer of ldquochocolate soilrdquo dated to the sixth or fifth century BCEhad subsequently destroyed the Period V and most earlier floors south of Wall65⁶sup1 On the east a large tract of Roman quarrying also encroached on these re-mains as far west as 645˚ E and destroyed at least half of Room kq

Only a few architectural changes occurred between Kenyonrsquos Periods IVndash IVaand V⁶sup2 Besides the subdivision of Pit i the more prominent changes are repre-sented by an entirely new series of well-built rooms to the south and west of thepit (Rooms o h q hq kq and s see Fig 2) These chambers subsumed the south-ern half of former Rooms a-d (of Periods IIIndash IV) overran the disturbed Area eand continued eastward to take in the southern half of Room hkWall 65 whichhad constituted the southern border of an earlier set of chambers (Period IV

See CAD for appropriate parallels See eg Sub-category 34 above though the unusual turn of events at the provincial capitalat Melīdi provides an exception In the following discussion this phase plan relates to both Period V and Period VI (cf SS I107 fig 50) SS III 107 Compare SS I figs 48ndash50

168 Ron E Tappy

Rooms o-h-q) now separated o-h-q-hq-kq from other apparent spaces construct-ed to their south (eg Room s) The excavators maintained in various publica-tions that a considerable deposit of destruction debris overlay even the fewfloors that survived in this area Scrutiny of the available data however failsto validate this assertion

The excavators reported that they recovered only a meager quantity of pot-tery from beneath the Period V house floors In fact the official report presentsan astonishingly limited corpus to represent this important time-span (five jarfragments and three cooking pot rims) Furthermore the report fails to demon-strate a clear correlation between the loci that yielded the published potteryand the area of the summit that revealed the most significant Period V construc-tion activity Five of the eight published fragments derive from two findspots lo-cated in Room hk labeled in the field notes as Segment 125144 and E Strip Be-tween Test Trench 2ndashTest Trench 3⁶sup3 The excavators cut a lateral section through

Fig 1 General plan of the summit Adapted from SS I pl II courtesy of the Palestine Ex-ploration Fund London

Cf SS III 118ndash 19 fig 8 2ndash5 8 In SS III 118 Kenyon also assigned fig 8 1 to Room hk but itappears that this jar came instead from Room hq


the northern half of Room hk and Segment 125144 lay on the western portion ofthis line while E Strip Btw TT2ndashTT3 ran along its eastern side In Segment125144 a rather thick deposit of soil covered the purported Period IV floorand the excavators identified it as Layer IIIe in 125144 (old Room h) and LayerV in Btw TT2ndashTT3 (old Room k) They understood this layer as the only survivingPeriod V surface in the new Room hk

Unpublished field notes however indicate that Layer III actually comprisedldquoone of several levels making up III above IIIbrdquo⁶⁴ These records describe LayerIII generally as a ldquohard yellow levelrdquo that contained examples of ldquohard ringingwaresrdquo which prompted Kenyon to lower the estimated date of the deposit fromher Period IV to Period V Although the matrix of Layer III appears to have beenmore compact than some of the other fills along the northern courtyard andslopes the overall thickness of the deposit (ca 04 m) suggests that it in fact rep-

Fig 2 Phase Plan of Building Periods VndashVII Reproduced from SS I 107 fig 50 courtesy of thePalestine Exploration Fund London

Kathleen Mary Kenyon Fieldbook Qk-l-m Notes from the 1933 Season of Excavation 48a Ken-yonrsquos hand-written unpublished records from the Joint Expedition are now stored at the Pales-tine Exploration Fund in London I am grateful to both Rupert L Chapman III and Felicity Cob-bing who over the years have granted me full access to these important materials

170 Ron E Tappy

resents a densely packed fill not an Israelite surface natural accumulation ofsoil or pure occupational debris left on a surface from either Period IV or V

Kenyon designated the portion of Layer III that actually ran up to the south-ern face of Wall 155 (on the northern side of Room hk) as Layer IIIo TogetherLayers III and IIIo yielded half of the published Period V assemblage⁶⁵ The ce-ramic traditions reflected in two jar fragments⁶⁶ are at home in the mid-to-lateeighth century although they also extend into the seventh century BCE Kenyonherself remarked on the general lateness of the hard thin ware and full light-colored slip exhibited by one of them⁶⁷ Both fragments came from the thickfill of Layer III but because of the secondary nature of this type of matrixthese items can help only to establish the terminus post quem for the depositionof that level Two other fragments⁶⁸ belong to Layer IIIo and reflect ceramic tra-ditions from the late Iron Age II period One of these the purported cooking potrim⁶⁹ finds its best parallel among the late Iron II family of jars⁷⁰ Holladay hasnoted that the holemouth forms represented by the other fragment⁷sup1 with theirwide mouths (32 cm) and thickened slightly molded triangular ledges on theouter rim ldquoare ubiquitous in seventh century depositsrdquo⁷sup2 In short Level III ap-pears to have been put in place sometime in the late eighth or early seventh cen-tury BCE

A doubled-grooved tripled-ridged fragment⁷sup3 emerges as the most typicalseventh-century holemouth rim although the tradition continues into thesixth century BCE This piece came from Layer V in E Strip Btw TT2ndashTT3which Kenyon took to represent a 14-cm-thick floor belonging to Period V Butunpublished field sections show that this deposit deepens into a foundationtrench for a later wall (125b) that replaced or repaired the broken or robbedWall 56 along the southern border of Room hk⁷⁴ Rather than depicting the prin-cipal Period V surface in this room then Layer V may actually represent the bot-

SS III fig 8 2ndash3 5 8 SS III fig 8 2 5 SS III fig 8 5 SS III fig 8 3 8 SS III fig 8 8 SS III fig 12 10 (Period VIII) Kenyon however compared our fragment to SS III figs 11 32(Period VII) and 30 26 (unstratified) SS III fig 8 3 Holladay Ninth and Eighth Century Pottery 131 n 119 SS III fig 8 4 In the late Hellenistic period yet another wall (which the excavators labeled Wall 125a) wasbuilt in this location Kenyon herself acknowledged in her field notes that the phasing of thiswall touched on at least three periods (Kenyon Fieldbook Qk-l-m 10)


tom striations of a subsequent fill and therefore might well postdate Period V al-together

Although the excavation Segment W of 124 also lay near the sequence ofWalls 56ndash 125bndash 125a it extended southward from that point into Room hqand toward the summit not northward into Room hk as the excavation reportsometimes seems to indicate⁷⁵ The local stratigraphy in this area ran alongboth sides of Wall 132 which divided Rooms hq and kq The earliest surviving de-posits in this segment lay east of Wall 132W (Layers VIcndashVIIc) and the construc-tion of the wall cut these levels An elongated bag-shaped jar⁷⁶ however camefrom the deep deposit of fill poured against the western face of 132W (Layer VIII)This type of jar dates in my judgment at least as late as the seventh centuryBCE although its floruit may fall slightly later still The level in which it wasfound can hardly represent a surface of any kind and the fact that the fieldnotes indicate this matrix primarily yielded pottery forms from Periods Indash IV at-tests to the mixed nature of its contents as is characteristic of imported fill lev-els One must therefore lower the terminus post quem (date of deposition) for thissubfloor fill and whatever surface it might have supported to at least the seventhcentury BCE that is to well after the Assyrian conquest of Samaria

Another field section relating to Segment 509126 in Room j reveals threesuccessive floor levels (Layers XI X and IXpaving stones) laid across massivedeposits of construction debris and imported fills (Layers XIIndashXIV) WhileLayer XI reflects Ahabrsquos extension of the courtyard north of Omrirsquos original En-closure Wall 161 comparative stratigraphic analysis shows that the intermediateLayer X corresponds directly to deposits that overran and sealed the remains ofPeriod III Wall 160 (assigned by Kenyon to Jehu) These levels then probablydate to sometime in the early eighth century BCE The packing of Layer IX aroundthe flat paving stones correlates well with surrounding deposits (eg Layer VNorth of TT 2) dating to the second half of the eighth century BCE or possiblyslightly later stillWhile no ivory fragments or burned sooty materials appearedin these deposits Layer IX yielded a short-flanged cooking pot rim⁷⁷ A similarrim⁷⁸ although of the elongated type with a flattened outer face and a deepergroove under the flange came from Layer IX inside Room n farther to theeast again from soil packed around the stone paving Deep fills and multiplerobber trenches characterize the stratigraphy in Room n to the east of Wall

See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 190ndash97 SS III fig 8 1 SS III fig 8 7 SS III fig 8 6

172 Ron E Tappy

561 Certainly then these two fragments do not reflect the latest ceramic tradi-tions associated with the so-called Period V House Their respective styles appearwith subtle variations throughout the tenth and early ninth centuries BCE andHolladay correctly recognized these two specimens as early-ninth-centuryforms⁷⁹ But the deposits that yielded these pieces represent secondary fillsand packing used for laying flagstone floors during a later period They in noway represent a massive conflagration from an assault against the city by anyof the Neo-Assyrian rulers

In sum no stratigraphic or ceramic information gleaned thus far attests to adestruction event of any magnitude that might stem from the activities of Ti-glath-pileser III (either during the years of the Syro-Ephraimite War or in a puta-tive second campaign in 728727 BCE⁸⁰) Shalmaneser V (at any point during hisreign) or even Sargon II (in 720 BCE)Within the amazingly scant ceramic assem-blage the mixture of ninth-century BCE cooking pot rims with jar forms from theseventh century BCE (or later) reveals the secondary nature of the pottery-bear-ing deposits assigned to Period V

42 Building Period VI (Fig 2)

Several basic facts must inform any summary of the layers and materials as-signed to Period VI First only two principal deposits yielded the ceramicgroup assigned to this period Kenyon described one of these as a ldquolevelling con-temporary with Wall 573rdquo ― a feature lying ca 30 m north of the royal com-pound on the middle terrace of the northern slope ― and she identified itstwo pottery-bearing segments as North of 551 and 513514 Pit i reportedly con-tained the second deposit and she labeled the local stratigraphy Segments12212519121 and 12212619121 Second Kenyon remained unable to assign a re-liable date to Wall 573 and held open two tentative alternatives (1) this featurewhich stood just inside the main road that curved around the northern slopesbefore approaching the eastern city gate represented the final defensive struc-ture constructed by the Israelites or (2) the origins of the wall lay in one ofthe early construction projects commissioned by Sargon II after his takeover ofthe city Third Kenyon understood the limited Period V repertoire as indistin-guishable from the collection assigned to Period VI Ultimately therefore sheplaced Wall 573 in Period VI based solely on the claim of a strong ceramic affili-

Holladay Ninth and Eighth Century Pottery 131 As suggested by Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fallrdquo


ation with the latest vessels in Pit i on the summit Fourth Kenyon treated thepottery groups recovered from both contexts as examples of ceramic horizons(homogeneous materials reflecting a rather specific date and often derivingfrom destruction debris) not of ceramic periods (mixed materials that oftencome from imported fills and that show attributes which developed over aspan of time)⁸sup1

According to the official report ldquothe big raising of level contemporary withwall 573 hellip was only cleared in a trench 2 m wide between this wall and thenorthern casemate wall at c 600 Erdquo⁸sup2 A principal excavation segment laynorth of Wall 551 (the massive Greek Fort Wall constructed in the late Hellenisticperiod ca mid-second century BCE) and all but one pottery fragment publishedfrom this area came from this particular locus The field notes record only threemain phases of activity here each with various associated sub-levels early Hel-lenistic (Layers Indash IV) Israelite Period VI (Layer V) and Israelite Period I (LayersVIndashVIII) Kenyon understood the Hellenistic deposits to predate the constructionof Greek Fort Wall 551 and she assigned these levels to the late third or earlysecond century BCE

Kenyonrsquos field notations describe the ldquodeccardquo soil of Layer V⁸sup3 as ldquoPeriod VIfilling running up to 573rdquo⁸⁴ Yet while published Section CD traces this depositonly as far as Robber Trench 578⁸⁵ the field sections reveal that it continuednorthward to Robber Trench 573 as sub-Layer Va and even beyond that pointas sub-Layer Vb⁸⁶ Significantly these field records also reveal that Va lay ldquoinRT 578 sealed by Vd Period VIrdquo and that Vb comprised ldquopart of RT 573(LR [= Late Roman])rdquo⁸⁷ These data alone lead one to expect a very mixed as-

See Holladay Ninth and Eighth Century Pottery 16 n 36 for elaboration of these definitions SS III 119 Although no published section extended this far beyond the Casemate SystemSection CD comes the closest to Wall 573 and reaches as far north (down-slope) as Wall 578which ran almost contiguously to the southern face of 573 (see SS I pl II) Clearance operationsconducted in 1965 by Fawzi Zayadine ldquoSamaria-Sebaste Clearance and Excavations (October1965ndash June 1967)rdquo ADAJ 12 (1967ndash68) 77ndash80 revealed a wall fragment farther to the east (at700˚ndash715˚ E x 498˚ N) which he understood as the eastward extension of Kenyonrsquos Wall 573No stratigraphic connection exists between these two wall segments and in fact Zayadine ul-timately described his so-called Wall c as a ldquolater additionrdquo to 573 He dated the pottery takenfrom the foundation trench of this feature to the late eighth century BCE and noted that thegroup included a rim fragment apparently from an Assyrian-style bowl This layer contributed all but one fragment illustrated in SS III fig 9 Kathleen Mary Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vols Indash II Notes from the 1935 Season of Excavation(unpublished ms in the Palestine Exploration Fund London) Vol II 118a See n 82 above Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 258 fig 51 Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vol II 118a

174 Ron E Tappy

semblage of ceramic traditions from this area Moreover that a number of robbertrenches broke all stratigraphic connections between Wall 573 and SegmentNorth of 551 further compromises the integrity of the overall deposit Most ofthe pottery forms discovered here might easily derive from the earliest decadesof Assyrian hegemony over the city (ie the late-eighth to early-seventh centu-ries BCE) This group includes two bowls⁸⁸ a decanter⁸⁹ a juglet⁹⁰ and two bra-ziers⁹sup1 The fragment of ldquoSamaria Warerdquo⁹sup2 on the other hand may come fromthe period leading up to 732 BCE The mixed series of cooking pot rims⁹sup3 displaysperhaps the longest chronological range since these pieces reflect mainly varia-tions on the flanged-style rims that existed during the ninth and eighth centuriesBCE

The latest pottery in this context of course suggests the turn of the eighthcentury as the earliest possible date of deposition for this deep fill Ceramic par-allels from Megiddo Stratum III support this conclusion⁹⁴ But stratigraphicallyat best this findspot represents a secondary context and a ceramic period not apersuasive horizon Moreover none of the field notes relating to Segment Northof 551 mentioned burned debris or even the scattered presence of charred ivoryfragments That is to say the area produced no evidence of destruction by fire

Unlike North of 551 located down the slope near the northern perimeterroad Segment 513514 lay farther uphill and immediately outside the old IsraeliteCasemate System It too yielded remains from three principal periods of activ-ity R4 (Late Roman period fourth century CE [Layers Indash IV]) the Hellenistic pe-riod (mid-second century BCE [Layers VndashVII]) and disparate deposits assignedto the Israelite period (Periods I and VI [Layers VIIIndash IX]⁹⁵ ldquoMiddenish-lookingdebrisrdquo appeared in Layer II mixed with the natural overburden that coveredthis area Beneath these levels significant quantities of burnt matrix did notemerge until Layer V the massive deposit of fill poured down the slope andagainst the Greek Fort Wall Layer VI included steeply pitched narrow bandsof unconsolidated ldquostreaky sootyrdquo material separated by additional brownishfill This stratigraphic situation does not reflect then an in situ destructionlevel but instead successive rakings of debris from earlier periods down over

SS III fig 9 1 3 SS III fig 9 5 SS III fig 9 7 SS III fig 9 8ndash9 SS III fig 9 2 SS III fig 9 10ndash 18 For specific examples see Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 266ndash76 285ndash94 See Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vol I 69a Vol II 137a


the northern slopes into a secondary context where the debris served as basicleveling material⁹⁶ A complete saucer the only fragment from this area thatdid not come from North of 551 originated in Hellenistic Layer VI⁹⁷

Back inside the Casemate System in a service area lying below the centralsummit plateau Pit i lay near the center of a poorly built cluster of rooms labeledg h j and hk Although Kenyon claimed to have removed the entire assemblagepresented in SS III Fig 101ndash27 from two related layers (VndashVa) located insidethis pit a detailed analysis of the unpublished excavation records reveals a dif-ferent situation⁹⁸ While Segment 12212519121 which yielded the majority offragments took in the pit it also extended southward to the higher rock ofthe central summit and Wall 56125 at the southern boundary of Room hk Sim-ilarly the coordinates 12212619121 included the pit but also the space to itsnorth perhaps as far as the northern perimeter of Room g (Wall 138) wherethe rock continued to decline and greater amounts of fill were required to ach-ieve a suitable construction level⁹⁹

Although Kenyon placed the origin of Pit i in her Period IV she believedthat it continued in use throughout Period V and that its contents reflected theAssyrian destruction of the city in 720 BCE Elsewhere however she acknowl-edged that ldquothe Period VII debris which overlay the floors of the rest of thehouse did not actually overlie the pitrdquo Moreover she interpreted the impressivequantity of pottery contained in the pit as ldquoidentical with that in the filling con-temporary with wall 573rdquosup1⁰⁰ Finally she noted that this assemblage differed (atleast in its significance) from the ldquofew sherds of hellip harder ware including somefragments of water decantersrdquo that she excavated beneath the Period V Housefloorssup1⁰sup1 That the upper courses of the pit stood at least as high in elevationas all the surrounding deposits and ldquoconsiderably above the level of the adjoin-ing roomsrdquo together with Kenyonrsquos acknowledgment that the putative ldquodestruc-tionrdquo remains neither appeared in situ nor sealed nor even partly covered theopen mouth of the pit seem to indicate a functional life for this structure that

In an unpublished paper titled ldquoNote of Levels Samaria Excavations 1931ndash5 Q Area (Sum-mit)rdquo (available in the archives of the PEF in London) Kenyon herself described these deep fillsas ldquomaterial obtained by slicing off the highest deposits of the surrounding areardquo SS III fig 9 1 The daily excavation records show that Layer V and its related sub-depositscomprise a mixture of construction debris and leveling fills and Layer VI is described as ldquoH[el-lenistic] VI Streaky sooty all part of GFW [Greek Fort Wall] filling but also RT [RobberTrench] 541rdquo (Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vol I 69a) Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 296ndash301 341ndash46 The main indicator Wall 126 lay contiguous to the northern face of Wall 138 SS III 119ndash20 SS I 108

176 Ron E Tappy

either survived or postdated both the purported conflagration event and thepost-destruction leveling operation

The materials assigned to Pit i therefore do not appear to have come onlyfrom that specific installation A slight majority of the published pottery(5556) reflects a series of rather late developments in Iron Age II ceramic tra-ditions that is trends that arose or flourished after the Assyrian takeover of Sa-mariasup1⁰sup2 The largest collection of whole or nearly whole vessels (333) howev-er appears to predate the so-called Pax Assyriaca and many of the traditionsmight easily extend as far back as the ninth century BCEsup1⁰sup3 This dichotomy with-in the ldquopit assemblagerdquo clearly militates against the position that ldquono seriousquestion can be raised about the essential homogeneity of the grouprdquosup1⁰⁴ Differ-ences also emerge between the stylish pottery of Pit i and that taken from the fillsaround Wall 573 which yielded a preponderance of thick heavy bowls or brazi-ers and utilitarian cooking pot forms Thus whereas Kenyon equated these twoceramic groups I cannot Actually the Pit i corpus with its examples of hard-fired ware identifiable water decanters etc seems more akin to the few frag-ments recovered from beneath the Period V House floors Yet Kenyon attemptedto divorce these two groups The better-preserved materials came from the areasouth of the pit (Segment 12212519121) while the more fragmentary examplesoriginated to its north and reflected the later phases of ceramic traditions attest-ed by the overall group

Thus a significant portion of the Period VI pottery appears to have derivedfrom leveling debris surrounding Pit i that is from layers that Kenyon includedin her Period VII And since the latest materials in these unconsolidated fillsspan at least the first half of the seventh century BCE the leveling activity itselfmust have occurred sometime during or after that point not in 722ndash21 BCE oreven during the period immediately following Sargonrsquos subjugation of the cityin 720 BCE Multiple seal impressions recovered from the pit originated in Twen-ty-second Dynasty Egyptsup1⁰⁵ and Kenyon herself placed some of them in the lateeighth or seventh century BCE a conclusion that supports a post-Israelite datefor these deposits These seal impressions also suggest a period of peaceful As-syro-Egyptian contact at the site in the years following Israelrsquos loss of political

For whole or nearly whole forms see SS III fig 10 7ndash8 15ndash 17 24ndash25 for the fragmentssee SS III fig 10 9ndash 12 13() 18ndash 19 27 For whole or nearly whole forms see SS III fig 10 1ndash6 21ndash23 for the fragments see SS IIIfig 10 14 20 26 See also Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 345 Table 43 for thespecific segment ― 12212519121 or 12212619121 ― to which each entry in nn 46ndash47 belongs Holladay Ninth and Eighth Century Pottery 68 See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 245ndash46 299


autonomysup1⁰⁶ In short the entire interpretive framework that Kenyon and othershave applied to the principal Period VI loci seems tendentious in nature

43 Building Period VII (Fig 2)sup1⁰⁷

Period VII does not represent a new phase of construction rather it consists inldquoa thick layer of debris with much burnt matter including a considerable quan-tity of burnt ivoryrdquosup1⁰⁸ that supposedly lay over the remains of the Period V rooms(although not Pit i) and stemmed from Assyriarsquos sacking of the site around 720BCE The paltry nature of the Period V pottery repertoire the lack of a strati-graphic connection between Periods V and VI the apparent inaccuracy of fieldrecordings relating to Pit i and the fact that Pit i appears stratigraphicallylater than the Period VII debris pose serious questions for the excavatorsrsquo ar-chaeological and historical interpretations

Four pottery-bearing loci from this period related to a single room or featurewhile three additional segments ran through multiple rooms The total space in-volved in this portion of fieldwork however remained quite limited (120 msup2449˚ndash464˚ N x 638˚ndash646˚ E) owing to substantial disturbances from the Persianthrough Roman periods that impinged on virtually all the surrounding areassup1⁰⁹Yet the excavators published a more diverse ceramic assemblage from the dispa-rate contexts encountered here and nearly 78 of the entire published corpusof ivory fragments came from layers belonging to only two segments in this area(W of 124 and 19511420)sup1sup1⁰

See Graham I Davies Megiddo (Cambridge Lutterworth 1986) 102 104 Since the excavators did not include in the excavation report from the Joint Expedition aseparate phase plan for their Period VII the drawing for Periods VndashVI must serve as ourpoint of reference SS III 97 For example a thick band of sticky chocolate soil deposited during the Persian periodblanketed the entire area south of Wall 65 (see Fig 2) and destroyed ldquoall the latest Israelite de-positsrdquo beneath it Similarly substantial quarrying activities in the Roman period cut through atleast half of Room kq Kenyon noted further that the area covered by the old Room k (= Room hkand the northern half of Rooms hq and kq) was ldquocompletely disturbed by later walls and robbertrenchesrdquo (SS I 110) See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 443ndash95 for a full locational analysis ofthe published ivories and Ron E Tappy ldquoThe Provenance of the Unpublished Ivories from Sa-mariardquo in ldquoI Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Timesrdquo (Ps 782b) Archaeological and HistoricalStudies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday ed Aren M Maeir andPierre de Miroschedji (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2006) 637ndash56 for a similar study of alarge group of unpublished fragments

178 Ron E Tappy

The single-feature segments include 19511420 (Room e) 12212519121 and125144 (Room hk) and 504503509508 (Room l) The heavily disturbed area in-side Room e contributed five fragments from two layers IVa and VIc Layer IVawhich yielded several examples of thin shallow hard-ware bowlssup1sup1sup1 belonged toSegment 19511420 located immediately east of Wall 57 (The excavators labeledthe matrix lying farther away from the wall Layer IVd)While it remains difficultto determine whether or not this deposit actually abutted the wall it clearly over-laid a rather wide cut that appears to represent a robber trench associated withthe partial plundering of Wall 57 The deposition of Layer IVa therefore post-dates the construction use and intentional dismantling of this wall If Wall57 belongs to the final days of Israelite control over Samaria as the excavatorsbelieved the matrix of Layer IVa most likely dates to a later period TogetherLayers IVa and IVd covered two separate pits or drains (both labeled LayerVIc) that yielded examples of a ceramic tradition which differed in many re-spects from the finer bowls of the stratigraphically later Layer IVasup1sup1sup2 Butagain since these pits intruded into levels that were apparently contemporarywith the wall their functional life may have either paralleled or postdatedthat of the wall

Segment 12212519121 lay near the previous area mentioned above but onthe eastern side of Wall 151 in the westernmost portion of Room hkUnfortunate-ly the ancient robbing of walls in this area including at least the partial plun-dering of Wall 151 itself broke the stratigraphic connection between this segmentand 19511420 A short inwardly inclined profiled storage jar rim with ridgednecksup1sup1sup3 from Layer IIIz reflects a ceramic tradition that does not seem to have ex-tended much beyond the eighth century BCE (notwithstanding a close parallelfrom a reportedly sixth-century context at Bethel)sup1sup1⁴ Layer IIIz represents atrench cut by the excavators through the hard matrix of Layer III which they ten-tatively assigned to their post-Israelite Period VIIIsup1sup1⁵ An intact standsup1sup1⁶ camefrom a sooty deposit overlying Layer III in Segment 125144 which also restedwithin the confines of Room hk Although these forms are generally consideredto hold little if any chronological value their overall distribution at Megiddo be-gins in Stratum IV but concentrates in Strata IIIndash II and parallels appear in Ni-

SS III fig 11 12 15 17 SS III fig 11 23 28 SS III fig 11 25 See William Foxwell Albright and James Leon Kelso ldquoThe Excavation of Bethel(1934ndash 1960)rdquo AASOR 39 (1968) pl 67 11 compare also pl 67 1 and p 75 sect 299 n 63 Kenyon Fieldbook Qk-l-m 5a SS III fig 11 35


veau 1 (seventh century) at Tell el-Farah (N)sup1sup1⁷ The stratigraphic context howev-er does not help to refine the dating of the stand since it came from a deposit ofleveling fill that overran Walls 136 and 145 plus portions of Room hk and thatsupported a series of Hellenistic walls resting directly on (and in one instanceset into) the mixed matrix of the fill

Farther to the east Segment 504503509508 lay inside the western half ofRoom l although it may not have actually abutted Wall 142 The excavators pub-lished a small group of five fragmentary vessels from this area including twobowls made of hard-ringing waresup1sup1⁸ and three jar rim fragmentssup1sup1⁹ One of thejars also exhibits a hard thin ware while another represents a holemouthformsup1sup2⁰ that came from Layer Vaz Both field drawings and narratives indicatethat this deposit comprised the backfill in a foundation trench for Wall 508afrom the ldquoR4 Periodrdquo or fourth century CEsup1sup2sup1 All the other pieces came fromlocal Layer Va a backfill poured against another wall (552) during Herodianbuilding operations around 30 BCEsup1sup2sup2 The secondary nature of all these depos-its then reduces the materials published from them to circumstantial evidencethat does not directly reflect a conflagration at the site resulting from an Assyrianattack in the 720s BCE

Three excavation tracts extended through more than one of the rooms on thenorthern side of the summit Segments 12012119126 (Rooms e f g kq) 509126(Rooms f j l) and West of 124 (Rooms hq kq) These areas yielded more thantwo-thirds of the entire ceramic assemblage published in support of Period VIIThe first two segments focus on the irregularly built rooms (e through l) situatednorth of a rock scarp that defined the plateau of the central summit

More than 43 of the entire Period VII pottery group came from Segment12012119126 alone and three quarters of this corpus originated in Room gThe vertical distribution of these items concentrated in Layers VI (nine frag-ments) and VII (five fragments) with Layers V and VIII contributing one sherdeach (Fig 3) The midden-like matrix of Layer VIII lay over patches of a burntplaster floor that rested on or very close to bedrock This 20 cm-thick level con-tained the seventh-century jar rim fragment of hard reddish waresup1sup2sup3 A much

For parallels and a fuller discussion see Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II423ndash25 SS III fig 11 4 6 SS III fig 11 30ndash31 33 SS III fig 11 30 See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 370 fig 62 See Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 371ndash72 fig 63 SS III fig 11 27

180 Ron E Tappy

thicker deposit of rubble-filled earth (Layer VII) covered the surviving portion ofVIII The next layer actually consisted of two substantially thicker deposits ofcleaner fill both of which were labeled Layer VI These levels do not reflectthe remains of battle rather they appear to be routine fillings designed toraise or prepare a building level for the following phase of construction For ex-ample the double deposit of Layer VI became the subfloor makeup for the hardyellow-colored clay of the Period VIII surface in Layer V which did not remainintact across the entire area of Room g The repertoire recovered from these com-bined levels dates almost exclusively to the seventh century BCEsup1sup2⁴ Moreoverthe origins of all the published bowls from the earlier Layer VII lie in the seventhcenturysup1sup2⁵ and even the tall-necked jar fragmentsup1sup2⁶ from the debris of Layer VIIIlikely dates no earlier than the seventh century BCE It may in fact represent alocal imitation of a Neo-Assyrian form but with the hard-fired red ware distin-guishing it from the greenish-buff clay often used in the manufacture of true As-

Fig 3 Rooms hq and kq view toward south Reproduced from Kathleen Mary Kenyon FieldbookQk-l-m Notes from the 1933 Season of Excavation 46a courtesy of the Palestine ExplorationFund London

From Layer VI see SS III fig 11 10 18ndash20 32 34 37 for Layer VIw see fig 11 9 The pro-filed jar fragment in fig 11 24 represents the only piece belonging to the eighth century BCE SS III fig 11 1 5 7 14 SS III fig 11 27


syrian vessels If this piece does not represent an intrusive element in Layer VIIIthen the terminus post quem of this and all successive layers belongs in the sev-enth century BCE or later

Segment 509126 reportedly spanned three laterally adjoining chambersRooms f j and l (with Room l actually constituting an open-air space) Threeof the Period VII fragments published from this areasup1sup2⁷ came from Layer IIafthe rubble lying beneath Floor IIa (a level that Kenyon equated with Layer Vin the above-mentioned Segment 12012119126) The field notes describe depositIIa as a ldquofloor sealing IIaf hellip [that] apparently contains H[ellenistic] pottery butthis [is] poss[ibly] a mistakerdquosup1sup2⁸ A single jar rimsup1sup2⁹ came from Layer VIII whichthe excavators correlated with Layer Va of Segment 504503509508 and LayerIIaf mentioned above In keeping with my earlier judgment regarding LayerVa then these deposits reflect a dumping of imported fill against the face ofa much later featuresup1sup3⁰ That some of the ceramic forms contained in this matrixappear to stem from earlier traditions than many of the other Period VII vesselsfurther supports its identification as imported secondary fill with an open termi-nus post quem

Finally Segment West of 124 ran primarily through the westernmost portionof Room kq near the eastern face of Wall 132 (Fig 2) It also however appears tohave included levels lying on the opposite (western) side of 132 in Room hqBoth chambers belong to the better-constructed complex of rooms on the plateauof the central summit just above the rock scarp that dropped down to Rooms fthrough l As noted earlier hardly any of kq survived the heavy Roman quarryingimmediately to the east (Fig 3)

The excavators published a series of five Period VII bowls that came fromthis segment Once again the results of both ceramic and stratigraphic analysesof this area concur with the conclusions reached for other segments One bowlsup1sup3sup1for instance came from Room kq Layer IIIc a mixed deposit of soot and hardyellow matrix situated just beneath the R3 (late second century CE) Wall 124aKenyon herself described this and similar bowls as ldquoall near the seventh centurytype with thickened rim often nearly triangular in sectionrdquosup1sup3sup2 While this formfirst appeared in significant numbers during the late eighth century its floruitoccurred in the seventh and even early-sixth centuries BCE A thin-walled

SS III fig 11 16 21 26 Kenyon Fieldbook Qn Vol II 104a SS III fig 11 29 Wall 555 see Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 373 fig 64 SS III fig 11 3 SS III 127

182 Ron E Tappy

bowlsup1sup3sup3 with its flange pushed up and tapered out to a point represents a relat-ed though possibly even later (sixth century) form It derived from Layer Vc apossible floor level in Room kq that ran up to the eastern face of Wall 132Wsup1sup3⁴Although this surface may constitute a reliable late-Israelite locus the ceramicassemblage it yielded again seems quite mixedsup1sup3⁵

The bowlssup1sup3⁶ reflect in my judgment a mixture of traits found in two Assyr-ian traditionsWhile the body forms of these vessels closely resemble the Assyr-ian Palace Ware (or ldquoTable Servicerdquo) motif the rim designs (strongly everted andoften curled out) and especially the ware of the Samaria exemplars find parallelsin the Ring-Based Bowls from Assyria Both items came from Layer VIw that isthat portion of a possible floor (VI) disturbed during the construction of Late Hel-lenistic Wall 133

The very hard thin black ware the shallow exterior ribbing on the uppercarination and the tall flaring upper sidewalls of one piece in particularsup1sup3⁷make it the best candidate for being an authentic Assyrian import It very likelyrepresents an imitation of a metal prototype Moreover its stratigraphic context(in Layer VII) ― between tightly spaced hard-packed surfaces that Kenyon datedto Periods V and VII ― may provide the most reliable findspot of any item pub-lished in connection with this period Yet the floors in question show no signs ofa massive destruction event Furthermore the collective attributes of this bowldo not demand an indisputable date prior to the fall of Israelite Samaria Infact Kenyon herself cited ldquoexact parallelsrdquo from Tell el-Farah (N) Niveau I andTell Jemmehsup1sup3⁸ and ultimately concluded that this innovative pottery entered Sa-maria only during the resettlement programs of Sargon II (programs which ac-cording to more recent research probably did not begin much before 716 BCE)

On the basis of a comparative ceramic analysis alone the chronological dis-tribution of the Period VII assemblage overall appears as follows ca 19 of thegroup could easily date to the eighth century BCE perhaps even before theevents of 722ndash720 BCEsup1sup3⁹ approximately 8 seem slightly later nearer theturn of the centurysup1⁴⁰ but more than 70 of the collection seem at home in

SS III fig 11 8 Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria II 387 fig 70 Compare the bowl rim in SS III fig 11 8 with Kenyonrsquos statement in Fieldbook Qk-l-m 21athat the overall character of the pottery seemed ldquofairly earlyrdquo SS III fig 11 11 13 SS III fig 11 22 SS III 97 SS III fig 11 16 18 21 24ndash25 29 31 SS III fig 11 19ndash20 35


the heart of the seventh century or even latersup1⁴sup1 More than 68 of the publishedgroup came from Rooms e g and l that is from the smaller more poorly con-structed and often heavily disturbed chambers situated below the rock scarp thatdelineated the central summit plateau Roughly one-third of these forms reflectclear or probable ties to Assyrian traditions though undoubtedly most representonly local imitations of foreign prototypessup1⁴sup2

From a stratigraphic analysis two crucial points clearly emerge First noneof the deposits from which the excavators removed this pottery can date earlierthan the seventh century BCE (with the possible exception of the thin accumu-lation of occupational debris in Layer VII of Segment West of 124) On the lowerend the depositional history germane to the published pottery extends even intothe early Roman period Second none of the stratigraphy that contained the ce-ramic assemblage reflects a coherent in situ destruction levelsup1⁴sup3 that is a whole-sale conflagration that ultimately spread evenly across the entire site as claimedby Kenyon The leveling over of burnt debris and mixed pottery (which generallyshows little to no trace of burning) occurred according to Kenyon ldquosufficientlylong after Sargonrsquos conquest for pottery brought by the newcomers hellip to be lyingaboutrdquosup1⁴⁴ Furthermore a larger problem remains in that the published corpus ofpottery derives not from a single layer ― burnt or not ― but from a wide array ofdisparate deposits that include clean leveling fill the tumble of rubble-filled ma-trix hard-packed floor levels from different cultural phases at least two post-Is-raelite pit fills the backfill of a late foundation trench other late (Hellenistic andRoman) disturbances of various kinds and only a very few pockets of potentiallyprimary occupational debris from any historical period

5 Conclusions

Judging from the evidence reviewed above neither the Assyrian texts nor thearchaeology of Samaria points to a physical destruction of the city near theclose of the third quarter of the eighth century BCE Various factors may offer

From the seventh century see SS III fig 11 1ndash7 9ndash 15 17 22ndash23 26ndash28 30 34 37 for laterperiods see SS III fig 11 8 32 and especially 33 from the Hellenistic period Eg see SS III fig 11 9ndash 15 17() 23 26ndash27 On the other hand the bowl in fig 11 22 thepainted jug in fig 11 28 and the Assyrian bottle in fig 11 34 may represent actual importedpieces The excavators themselves acknowledged that none of the purported destruction debris ap-peared in situ SS I 110 Kenyon Royal Cities of the Old Testament 133

184 Ron E Tappy

at least a partial explanation for this situation For example the early encounterbetween Hoshea and Shalmaneser V recalled by later writers may not have oc-curred inside Israel at all The AEC records that following Tiglath-pileser IIIrsquos ac-tions against Damascus and Israel in 733ndash732 BCE he proceeded ldquoto Shapiyardquo in731sup1⁴⁵ While the assault against the city of Sarrabanu began during this expedi-tion it turned into a protracted siege that extended at least into 729 BCEsup1⁴⁶ andthe Assyrians had apparently not yet subdued Shapiya even by the writing ofSummary Inscription 7 that is not before 729 BCE and perhaps later stillsup1⁴⁷So the arrival in the Shapiya-Sarrabanu region of Hoshearsquos diplomatic corps tooffer Israelrsquos tribute to Assyria may not have transpired until quite some timeafter the traditionally accepted year of 731 BCE much closer to the accessionof Shalmaneser V If the king designate accompanied his father to receive thetribute it seems reasonable to believe that the biblical writers accepted this oc-casion as the earliest real encounter between Shalmaneser V and Hoshea al-though the contact did not occur during a military campaign against Samaria

It also seems to have been common for Assyrian leaders during these yearsto blockade the capital city of a region and to ravage the countryside withoutcapturing or destroying the political center itself Tiglath-pileser III employedthe term esēru for this sometimes unplanned strategysup1⁴⁸ in relation to the Urar-tian capital of Turushpa in 735 BCEsup1⁴⁹ Damascus in 733 BCEsup1⁵⁰ and Shapiya in731 BCEsup1⁵sup1 Similarly Sennacheribrsquos later use of esēru in relation to Jerusalemmay reflect his different approach to that city as compared with Lachishsup1⁵sup2There is no reason to doubt that the intervening Assyrian rulers employed thesame tactic ― one that may help to explain further why we read of various siegesagainst Samaria (the region)sup1⁵sup3 but remain unable to correlate coherent destruc-tion levels from the capital city with the extant textual recordssup1⁵⁴ As indicated

Millard The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 59 Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 161 n 15 Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 154 163 n 23 See above Sub-category 24 and Category 3 with n 40 on the language of conquest Summary Inscription 1 23ndash24 (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 125nn 23ndash24) Annal 23 8rsquondash9rsquo (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 79 n 11) Summary Inscription 723 (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 163 n 23) See Tappy ldquoHistorical and Geographical Notesrdquo See the Palace Door Inscription IV 32 the Small Display Inscription XIV 15 the CylinderInscription l 19 the Bull Inscription l 21 and (for the sheer number of deportees mentioned)the Nimrud Prism iv 31 For destruction levels at Hill Country sites surrounding the city of Samaria see BeckingThe Fall of Samaria 59ndash60 and in greater detail with a balanced appraisal of the extent


earliersup1⁵⁵ I believe that the final form of 2Kgs 174 may preserve an historicalmemory of Shalmaneser Vrsquos having implemented this strategy against the capitalat Samaria Interestingly after Sennacheribrsquos campaigns the term esēru does notappear in the records of Esarhaddon

At any rate the archaeological record of various northern sites around Sa-maria shows a consistent pattern of activity Following the first substantialwave of military engagements throughout the northern valley areas during thedecade of the 730s BCE the Assyrians appear to have delayed regional adminis-trative and building programs until after the final political collapse of Israelitecontrol over the capital in the late 720ssup1⁵⁶ After Stratum V at Hazor even that sitedid not become a substantial citadel under the Assyrians until the time of Stra-tum III with the intervening Stratum IV showing merely a small unfortified set-tlement

Yet once the Assyrians had firmly established control over a particular re-gion and had selected (probably from economic interests) the most strategicsites they wished to rebuild and expandsup1⁵⁷ a much smoother transition betweensuccessive strata appears (eg Megiddo Strata IIIndash II Tell Keisan Levels 5ndash4a4b etc) Ultimately the strategic importance of control over the more insularcapital at Samaria was symbolic in nature ― a signal that everything from po-litical center to outlying economic hubs now belonged to Assyria While a pro-gram to resettle foreign populations in Samaria and elsewhere began or at leastaccelerated during the rule of Sargon II (716 BCE on) the physical refurbishing of

and local impact of Israelite deportations Gary N Knoppers ldquoIn Search of Post-Exilic Israel Sa-maria after the Fall of the Northern Kingdomrdquo in In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel Proceedings of theOxford Old Testament Seminar ed John Day (London TampT Clark 2004) 150ndash80 For a thoroughand systematic archaeological assessment of sites in Galilee Gilead Samaria and Philistia thatare named in either the biblical or Neo-Assyrian texts and of sites that go unmentioned in thesetexts see William G Dever ldquoArchaeology and the Fall of the Northern Kingdom What ReallyHappenedrdquo in Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeology and History of the EasternMediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie White Crawford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jer-usalem The W F Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Israel Exploration Soci-ety 2007) 78ndash92 See above n 29 Compare the transitions at Megiddo from Stratum IVA to III at Talsquoanach from Stratum IV toV at Yoqnelsquoam from Stratum 10 to 9 at Tell Abu Hawām from Stratum III to II at Keisan from theoccupational gap to Level 5 etc Compare Ekron and Gezer for parallels in the south Amihai Mazar ldquoThe Northern Shep-helah in the Iron Age Some Issues in Biblical History and Archaeologyrdquo in Scripture andOther Artifacts Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J King ed Michael D Coo-gan J Cheryl Exum and Lawrence E Stager (Louisville KY Westminster John Knox 1994)247ndash67 esp 260

186 Ron E Tappy

selected provincial centers (eg Megiddo more than Samaria) emerges from thearchaeological record only during the late-eighth and seventh centuries BCEFew traces of such a rebuilding effort have appeared in the depositional historyof Samaria apparently owing to the minimal destruction of the site by the Assyr-ians when they first ldquoconqueredrdquo the city


Norma Franklin

Megiddo and Jezreel Reflected in the DyingEmbers of the Northern Kingdom of Israel

1 The Beginning of the End

In 746 BCE Tiglath-pileser III came to the Assyrian throne as a usurpersup1 His for-eign policy was markedly different to that of his predecessors he enlarged thearea of Assyrian control annexed former client states and converted them intoAssyrian provincessup2 His rule marks the beginning of Assyriarsquos imperial phasesup3and significantly also the beginning of the end of the Kingdom of Israel TheNorthern Kingdom rebelled against Assyrian domination circa 734 BCE ndash anevent heralded by the murder of Pekahiah the son of Menahem and the acces-sion of Pekah to the Israelite throne in 736 BCE⁴ Tiglath-pileser responded to thegeneral unrest in the region by conducting three campaigns⁵ to the west includ-ing at least one against Israel between the years 734 and 732 BCE⁶ This resulted

Stefan Zawadzki ldquoThe Revolt of 746 BC and the Coming of Tiglath-pileser III to the ThronerdquoSAAB 8 (1994) 53ndash54 Karen Radner ldquoRevolts in the Assyrian Empire Succession Wars Rebellions against a FalseKing and Independence Movementsrdquo in Revolts and Resistance in the Ancient Classical Worldand the Near East In the Crucible of Empire ed John J Collins and Joseph G Manning (LeidenBrill 2016) 47 Shigeo Yamada ldquoInscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Chronographic-Literary Styles and theKingrsquos Portraitrdquo Orient 49 (2014) 31 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoForced Participation in Alliances in the Course of the Assyrian Campaignsto the Westrdquo in Ah Assyriahellip Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern HistoriographyPresented to Hayim Tadmor ed Mordechai Cogan and Israel Ephʿal (Jerusalem Magnes Press1991) 92ndash94 Tiglath-pileser conducted his 12th campaign (palucirc) in 734733 BCE along the Levantine Coasttravelling south via Šimirra-Tyre-Akzib-Akko-Dor-Ashkelon-Gaza His 13th campaign was con-ducted from the area of Damascus and southeast of the River Jordan It was only during thefinal 14th campaign that Damascus was captured and the bulk of the Kingdom of Israel con-quered including Gezer Samaria the capital and its immediate hinterland were spared anda new pro-Assyrian king Hoshea installed Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsin 734ndash732 BC Historical Background of Isa 7 2 Kgs 15ndash 16 and 2 Chr 27ndash28rdquo Bib 87 (1990)158 160ndash61 Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Edition with In-troductions Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences and Human-ities 1994) 279ndash82 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaign against Tyre and Israel(734ndash732 BCE)rdquo TA 22 (1995) 271

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-009

in the incorporation of the Kingdom of Israel ndash except for the capital Samariaand its immediate hinterland ndash into the Assyrian Empire The event is briefly re-corded in 2Kgs 1529 and contemporary Assyrian information is provided by Ti-glath-pileser IIIrsquos Summary Inscription which states that Bit-Ḫumria the Assyr-ian name for the Kingdom of Israel had been captured⁷ and gives its newborders⁸ while Tiglath-pileserrsquos Annals describe the destruction and deportationfrom sixteen districts of Bit-Ḫumria⁹ The Kingdom of Israel was in effect nomore its only remnant was the rump state of Samaria ruled by an Assyrianpuppet-king Hosheasup1⁰

This paper focuses on Megiddo and Jezreel the former was transformed intothe provincial capital of Magidducircsup1sup1 while the small settlement of Jezreel becamea frontier sitesup1sup2 on the border between Magidducirc and Samaria

2 Megiddo before Tiglath-pileser III

The Stratum IVsup1sup3 city of Megiddo on the eve of Tiglath-pileserrsquos invasion was anincredible military and commercial enterprise that had been constructed some

Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 9 rev 9rsquo = Hayim Tadmor and ShigeoYamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V(726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) no 49 rev 9rsquo Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 4 6rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada The RoyalInscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 42 6rsquo Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Ann 18 3rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada The RoyalInscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 22 3rsquo and Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser IIIAnn 24 3rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 21 3rsquo cfKyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Deportations of the Israelitesrdquo JBL 117 (1998) 206ndash207 210 Hoshea was an Assyrian vassal placed on the throne by Tiglath-pileser III as recorded inTadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 4 16rsquondash9rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada TheRoyal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 42 16rsquondash9rsquo cf Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fall ofSamaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 478 This is the same policy that he em-ployed some five years earlier (in 738 BCE) when he placed a puppet-king Eni-ilu over the re-duced kingdom of Hamath Narsquoaman ldquoForced Participation in Alliancesrdquo 94 Ariel M Bagg ldquoPalestine under Assyrian Rule A New Look at Assyrian Imperial Policy in theWestrdquo JAOS 133 (2013) 123 For Assyrian frontier zone sites in the west see Yifat Thareani ldquoThe Empire and the lsquoUpperSearsquo Assyrian Control Strategies along the Southern Levantine Coastrdquo BASOR 375 (2016)77ndash 102 ldquoStratum IVrdquo is the name for the stable city used by the team of the Oriental Institute of theUniversity of Chicago (OIC) The name was changed to ldquoStratum IVArdquo following The Hebrew Uni-versity of Jerusalem excavations conducted by Yigael Yadin in the late 1960s ldquoStratum IVrdquo willbe used in this chapter

190 Norma Franklin

fifty years earliersup1⁴ circa 782 BCE during the early reign of Jeroboam II with thetacit agreement and logistical support of Adad-nerari III of Assyria (r 810ndash783BCE)sup1⁵ Its layout was reminiscent of a small-scale Assyrian arsenal an ekalmāšarti used for muster in most major Assyrian cities Although one cannotmake a direct comparison between Megiddo and for example the ekalmāšarti at Nineveh which was the headquarters of the Assyrian armysup1⁶ thereare certain similarities Both were built on a raised platform had two courtyardsand contained stone feeding troughs of similar size

In addition to Megiddorsquos military role its location on the Via Maris the mainhighway linking Assyria with Egypt also indicates that it was an important em-porium Megiddorsquos role as an Assyrian trading post (singular bēt kāri plural bētkarāni) had been established when Israel was a client state under Adad-ner-ari IIIsup1⁷ known to have established at least four new trading cities Whilesome of these trading posts were renamed with the prefix Kār- to designatetheir new role there were also instances when the original city name continuedto be used even by the Assyrianssup1⁸ This appears to be the situation at Megiddowhich is mentioned by its original name in an Assyrian textsup1⁹ in the same linewith cities known to be the seat of a rab kāri ldquoHead of the trading postrdquosup2⁰

Chariots were an essential part of both the Israelite and Assyrian armiesConsequently horses were one of the main traded items in the ancient NearEast particularly large Kushite chariot horses from Egyptsup2sup1 Megiddo was acity specifically constructed to deal with hundreds of horses with two large sta-ble complexes one of which had two identical courtyards (Courtyards 977 and

It has been suggested that the life span of cities in the Iron Age is approximately 50 to 60years Amnon Ben-Tor ldquoHazor and the Chronology of Northern Israel a Reply to Israel Finkel-steinrdquo BASOR 317 (2000) 11 As noted by Israel Finkelstein ldquoDestructions Megiddo as a CaseStudyrdquo in Exploring the Longue Dureacutee Essays in Honor of Lawrence E Stager ed David JSchloen (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2009) 118ndash19 Megiddo Stratum IV (A) was not de-stroyed in 732 BCE See Norma Franklin ldquoEntering the Arena The Megiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo in RethinkingIsrael Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein edOded Lipschits Yuval Gadot and Matthew Adams (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2017) 81ndash 101 Geoffrey Turner ldquoTell Nebi Yūnus The Ekal Māšarti of Ninevehrdquo Iraq 32 (1970) 85 Franklin ldquoMegiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo Shigeo Yamada ldquoKārus on the Frontiers of the Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquo Orient 40 (2005)58ndash62 Fredrick Mario Fales and John Nicholas Postgate Imperial Administration Records Part 2Provincial and Military Administration (Helsinki University of Helsinki Press 1995) no 2 A rab kāri would reside in the kāru Yamada ldquoKārus on the Frontiersrdquo 77ndash81 Deborah O Cantrell The Horsemen of Israel Horses and Chariotry in Monarchic Israel(NinthndashEighth Centuries BCE) (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) 44ndash46


1693) designed for chariot horses which were stabled in the city and traded fromitsup2sup2 A large facility such as the one at Megiddo could stable complete chariotsquadrons of twenty and even fifty chariots which is sixty to one hundredand fifty chariot horses at any one timesup2sup3 Located on a major trade route Megid-do would have been an important destination for Assyrian traders in particularfor the royal agents the tamkārū who traveled these trade routes often accom-panied by military personnel in order to obtain whatever the Assyrian kingneeded including horsessup2⁴

This was the city that Tiglath-pileser took over Clearly there was no logic indestroying such a useful trading station and mustering facility in fact therewere many reasons to preserve it intact and maintain its role

3 Megiddo after Tiglath-pileser III

There is no sign of destruction at Megiddo from the time that Tiglath-pileser IIIlaunched his campaign(s) against Israelsup2⁵ Megiddo presents a very different pic-ture to that revealed by the surveys and excavations conducted in the area to thenorth of it which shows that the region of the Upper Galilee was devastated inthe 8th century BCEsup2⁶ Its strategic location and economic potentialsup2⁷ would havemade Megiddo a natural candidate for the usual Assyrian practice of choosing asuitable pre-existing city and providing it with a residence for the governorsup2⁸Thus Megiddo was made the administrative capital of a newly created Assyrianprovince named Magiducirc

Specialized bēt kāri that dealt in the horse trade are known from the central Zagros regionKyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Assyrian Economic Impact on the Southern Levant in the Light ofRecent Studyrdquo IEJ 65 (2015) 184ndash85 n 14 For the various sizes of a chariot squadrons and the number of squadron known to havebeen deployed see Tamaacutes Dezső The Assyrian Army I The Structure of the Neo-AssyrianArmy (Budapest Eoumltvoumls University Press 2012) 136ndash47 Karen Radner ldquoTraders in the Neo-Assyrian Periodrdquo in Trade and Finance in Ancient Meso-potamia ed Jan G Dercksen (Istanbul Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten 1999)101ndash103 n 10 n 12 Contra Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoProvince System and Settlement Pattern in Southern Syria and Pal-estine in the Neo-Assyrian Periodrdquo in Neo-Assyrian Geography ed Mario Liverani (Rome Uni-versita di Roma 1995) 107 contra Younger ldquoDeportations of the Israelitesrdquo 213 Zvi Gal Lower Galilee during the Iron Age (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 1992) See Thareani ldquoEmpire and the lsquoUpper Searsquordquo 79 Karen Radner ldquoThe Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquo in Imperien und Reiche in der Weltgeschichte edMichael Gehler and Robert Rollinger (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2014) 103

192 Norma Franklin

Did this change of status mean that Megiddo was immediately rebuilt or re-designed to reflect its new position as an Assyrian provincial capital Whilethere is no doubt that Megiddo must have undergone some changes the Assyr-ian city of Stratum III evolved very slowlysup2⁹ According to the excavators mostwalls of the buildings of this stratum were built directly on those of StratumIV and there was no intervening accumulation of debris During the life of Stra-tum III buildings were frequently altered sometimes even before completionsup3⁰An analysis of the gradual changes that the city underwent must reflect thechanging role of Megiddo from an Israelite city to an Assyrian provincial capitalfirst as a capital of a frontier province and later as a provincial capital function-ing within the framework of the Assyrian Empire

The earliest modification was the construction of a palace a residence suit-able for the Assyrian governor Two large Assyrian residences Buildings 1052and 1369 were excavated by the Oriental Institute of Chicago (OIC) Building1052sup3sup1 is the earlier of the twosup3sup2 and it is generally thought to be the original res-idencesup3sup3 for the governor while Building 1369 represents a later additionsup3⁴ Thetwo buildings were connected by a suite of rooms consisting of Rooms 510 and511 and a bathroomsup3⁵ The enlargement of the Assyrian governorrsquos palace and theaddition of a bathroom must signify the growing importance of Megiddo and of

Megiddorsquos slow transformation from Stratum IV to Stratum III is in complete contrast to thetotal makeover that the city underwent when Stratum IV was built (see Franklin ldquoMegiddoStables Reconsideredrdquo) Stratum III was calculated by the Oriental Institute of Chicago (OIC)to have lasted some 150 years from circa 780 to 650 BCE If the inception of Stratum III is ad-justed to the period of direct Assyrian rule 734ndash732 BCE Stratum III is still seen to be along-lasting city ca a century which evolved and changed slowly Robert Lamon and Geoffrey M Shipton Megiddo I Seasons of 1925ndash34 Strata IndashV (ChicagoIL University of Chicago Press 1939) 62 Building 1052 appears to be the only Assyrian building that has a regular orthogonal planGordon Loud ldquoAn Architectural Formula for Assyrian Planning Based on the Results of Excava-tion of Khorsabadrdquo RA 33 (1936) 160 noted that at Khorsabad courts in the majority of casestend to approximate a square although often due to having to fit into a city plan not a truesquare Alexander Joffe Eric Cline and Oded Lipschits ldquoArea Hrdquo inMegiddo IIIThe 1992ndash 1996 Sea-sons vol 1 ed Israel Finkelstein David Ussishkin and Baruch Halpern (Tel Aviv Emery andClaire Yass Publications in Archaeology 2000) 160 Contra Ronny Reich ldquoThe Stratigraphic Relationship between Palaces 1369 and 1052 (Stra-tum III) at Megiddordquo BASOR 331 (2003) 39ndash44 Buildings 1052 and 1369 (Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I figs 89 and 101 fig 117) were re-built and adapted a number of times during the long period represented by Strata III and II(Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 69) Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 71


its governor as the empire evolved Interestingly the area in the city that waschosen for the governorrsquos palace was not suitable for sprawling monumentalbuildings It was an area where the ground sloped steeply downsup3⁶ from elevation167 m asl in the south (Grid Square O8sup3⁷) to elevation 153 m asl in the north(Grid Square L8sup3⁸) a drop of ca 17 m over a distance of ca 80 m The large levelarea that formed the Southern Stable Complex would have been eminently suit-able for the large-scale construction required for a palatial building but it wasnot utilized It has been noted previously that the public buildings (ie the sta-ble complexes) were not destroyed when the Assyrians took over Megiddo be-cause they were still in usesup3⁹ and that the transition was a gradual and peacefulone⁴⁰ Therefore I propose that the governorrsquos residence was built on less suit-able sloping ground because the Southern Stable Complex continued to be usedafter the Assyrian takeover Unfortunately the available data regarding theSouthern Stable Complex is not sufficient⁴sup1 to prove conclusively my theory re-garding the longevity of the complex and the resultant location of the palaceHowever the OIC did note that the stables had been used over a long periodof time and that some of the pottery recovered from the floors of the Stratum IVcomplex might actually belong to Stratum III⁴sup2

Finally the Southern Stable Complex was built over and elements from thestables were incorporated into the new domestic buildings For example pillarsand troughs from Stable Unit 1612 were incorporated into the Stratum III Build-ing 14231427⁴sup3 and two of the troughs in Stable Unit 1576 in Square R6 contin-ued to be used in situ in Stratum III Four Assyrian underfloor bathtub burialswere also found in the area of the former Southern Stable Complex and a fifth

Buildings 1052 and 1369 whose foundations resembled a small podium so that their interiorsurfaces could be at a uniform elevation had external stone buttresses to strengthen and stabi-lize them (see Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 70ndash71 figs 81 and 89 Section AndashB) See Norma Franklin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo BASOR 342 (2006) 104 fig 3 See Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I fig 89 Section AndashB Israel Finkelstein and David Ussishkin ldquoArchaeological and Historical Conclusionsrdquo in Me-giddo III 598 Baruch Halpern ldquoCentre and Sentry Megiddorsquos Role in Transit Administration and Traderdquoin Megiddo III 563ndash64 The Northern Stable Complex was discovered first and partially removed The Southern Sta-ble Complex was not removed It was excavated near the end of Philip Langstaffe Orde Guyrsquostenure as director and due to the pressure of work the documentation is less detailed Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 63 Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I fig 72

194 Norma Franklin

was found slightly further north⁴⁴ indicating a new Assyrian-influenced popula-tion Fortunately the longevity of the Northern Stable Complex is better docu-mented⁴⁵ It continued in use during Stratum III Stable Unit 351 was adaptedwith the addition of mud-brick mangers or grain bins⁴⁶ Eventually when thestables were no longer needed their mud-brick superstructure was deliberatelypulled downmdashevident by a thick layer of mud-brick collapse in the aislesmdashinpreparation for the construction of Stratum III⁴⁷ One of the units Stable Unit404 was later incorporated into a Stratum III building⁴⁸

The small domestic area exposed by the Tel Aviv University (TAU) excavationsin their Area H also exhibits an extended period of use TAUrsquos Level H-3 was equa-ted with the OICrsquos Stratum IV (IVA) The area was destroyed by fire but the de-struction was localized with a 60 cm deep collapse containing many restorablevessels⁴⁹ Of particular note was an Assyrian bottle (Vessel 1996H32VS6) re-trieved from Building Unit 8 a small domestic structure immediately below Build-ing 1853 and an open courtyard north of Building 1369⁵⁰ The locally manufacturedbottle is significant for dating the end of Level H-3 and a recent study by Peter VanDer Veen⁵sup1 has confirmed that this particular type of Assyrian bottle known as a

Building 1060 in Sq N9 (Lamon and ShiptonMegiddo I fig 74) had five steps At the lowestlevel there was an Assyrian bathtub It is impossible to determine if this was an underfloor bur-ial (robbed in antiquity) that was not recognized as such on excavation or if the Assyrian bath-tub served as part of an installation in a subterranean room (Lamon and ShiptonMegiddo I 63) For example the lime floor of Stable Unit 407 was reused by Stratum III rooms (452ndash458)signifying that they were built immediately after the unit ceased being used as a stable(Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 74) Stable Unit 364 also continued in use during Stratum IIIand was reconstructed and enlarged during that period (Lamon and Shipton 1939 Megiddo I63ndash4) Stable Unit 351 also continued in use in Stratum III and on excavation the troughswere found to be of mud-brick and rubble construction causing the excavators to surmisethat the original stone troughs had been discarded and the substitution made during the timeof Stratum III (Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 64 and fig 76) Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 65 fig 76 Eric H Cline ldquoArea L (the 1998ndash2000 Seasons)rdquo in Megiddo IV The 1998ndash2002 Seasonsvol 1 ed Israel Finkelstein David Ussishkin and Baruch Halpern (Tel Aviv Emery and ClaireYass Publications in Archaeology 2006) 116 See Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I figs 49 54 and 71 Israel Finkelstein Orna Zimhoni and Adi Kafri ldquoThe Iron Age Pottery Assemblages fromAreas F K and H and Their Stratigraphic and Chronological Implicationsrdquo in Megiddo III 310 That is the Assyrian bottle was found below later additions to Stratum III (see Joffe Clineand Lipschits ldquoArea Hrdquo 160) and may well denote the transition here from Stratum IV to Stra-tum III See the following footnote The author is indebted to Peter Van Der Veen who noted that ldquobased on my own observationson genuine Assyrian Palace Ware from the Assyrian heartland there can be little doubt that theNeo-Assyrian dimpled beakers are a late Assyrian innovation which were only introduced from


Neo-Assyrian dimpled beaker first appeared in Assyria during Sargonrsquos reign andconsequently locally made copies were an even later development

So when did the gradual transition from Stratum IV to Stratum III take placeand over how lengthy a time period The transformation appears to have begunwith the construction of Building 1052 for the newly appointed governor andended when the stable complexes were finally built over and a new city gatewas constructed⁵sup2 It is presumed that whatever small population existed in Me-giddo Stratum IV was deported at the same time that Tiglath-pileser III depopu-lated much of the Galilee⁵sup3 However possibly of greater importance is the ques-tion of when Megiddo was repopulated by the Assyrians The Assyrians broughtin deportees from the east between 716 and 708 BCE⁵⁴ They would have requiredhousing and the proliferation of domestic buildings in Stratum III provides aclue Jennifer Peersmann has argued that Megiddo was repopulated by Sargonsome five years after the final fall of Samaria⁵⁵ Baruch Halpern on the otherhand noted that the Assyrian domestic area appears to be orientated with theeast wing of Building 1369 suggesting that the domestic area was built onlyafter the governorrsquos palace had been extended to include that building⁵⁶ Heproposes therefore that the repopulation of Assyrian Megiddo may havetaken place in the time of Sennacherib or even as late as Esarhaddon Anotherclue is provided by the change already apparent in 709 BCE from chariotry tocavalry⁵⁷ which would have made the chariot stable complexes and the deep-chambered gates obsolete Eventually the Southern Stable Complex became awell-organized domestic area and four Assyrian bathtub burials⁵⁸ providesound evidence for the ethnic origin of at least part of the population Even if

the late 8th century BCE onwards (ie during the Sargonid period) Southern Levantine imita-tions therefore postdate the introduction in the central polity of Assyriardquo (pers comm) Cantrell The Horsemen of Israel 76ndash86 has suggested that the deep chambers of the Stra-tum IV six-chambered city gate were designed to facilitate the harnessing of the chariot teams 2Kgs 1529 mentions the deportation of the residents of both Upper and Lower Galilee IjonAbel-beth-maacah Janoah Kedesh Hazor Gilead and Galilee including the land of NaphtaliNo mention is made of Megiddo or Jezreel Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoPopulation Changes in Palestine Following the Assyrian DeportationsrdquoTA 20 (1993) 109ndash 11 Nadav Narsquoaman and Ran Zadok ldquoSargon IIrsquos Deportations to Israel andPhilistia (716ndash708)rdquo JCS 40 (1988) 42ndash46 Jennifer Peersmann ldquoAssyrian Magiddu The Town Planning of Stratum IIIrdquo in Megiddo III532 Halpern ldquoCentre and Sentryrdquo 568 Stephanie Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-pileser III and Sar-gon IIrdquo Iraq 47 (1985) 37ndash38 A fifth bathtub burial was found slightly northwest of the Assyrian palace buildings

196 Norma Franklin

a firm date is impossible to establish it is evident that the Stratum III domesticquarters evolved slowly starting with the construction of a small governorrsquos pal-ace circa 732 and possibly ending circa 701 BCE The OIC attempted to divideStratum III into IIIB (earlier) and III (later) observing that this simply reflectsthe rebuilding and renovation that took place throughout the period while Stra-tum II is simply a continuation of the preceding phase⁵⁹

4 Jezreel before Tiglath-pileser III

Jezreel⁶⁰ on the eve of Tiglath-pileserrsquos invasion was a military enclosure thathad been constructed at more or less the same time as Megiddo during thereign of Jeroboam II⁶sup1 It too could be classified as an ekal māšarti⁶sup2 albeitmuch smaller than the one at Megiddo however an 8th-century-BCE date for Jez-reel and a correlation with the Stratum IV stable city of Megiddo is not univer-sally accepted so a brief account of the argument will be presented here

The upper tell was excavated in the 1990s but only three preliminary reportsdealing almost exclusively with the Iron Age phases pertinent to this paper werepublished⁶sup3 and no final publication is expected⁶⁴ The excavators uncovered a

Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 62 Jezreel consists of two sites An upper tell Tel Jezreel is located on the summit of a rocky hillthat was continuously inhabited until the middle of the last century A lower tell Tel lsquoEin Jezreelis located by the perennial spring of lsquoEin Jezreel which was inhabited until the late Roman pe-riod Both sites had been plundered throughout the ages for building material and preservationis poor complicating our understanding of the history and archaeology of Jezreel (greater Jez-reel) The area of greater Jezreel was surveyed in 2012 and since 2013 the lower tell has been ex-cavated by a team from the University of Haifa and the University of Evansville led by NormaFranklin and Jennie Ebeling respectively See Norma Franklin ldquoJezreel before and after Jezebelrdquo in Israel in Transition From LateBronze II to Iron IIa (c 1250ndash850 BCE) ed Lester L Grabbe (London TampT Clark 2008) 45ndash53 Aster has pointed out that the enclosure at Jezreel also functioned as an ekal māšarti and tothe fact that Jezreel is referred to in 1Kgs 211 as having a heikal (translated there as palace) theterm is most likely derived from the Akkadian ēkallu which is another reason to recognize Jez-reel as an ekal māšarti a military enclosure See Shawn Zelig Aster ldquoThe Function of the City ofJezreel and the Symbolism of Jezreel in Hosea 1ndash2rdquo JNES 71 (2012) 39 Excavations from 1990 to 1996 were conducted by a joint expedition of Tel Aviv University(TAU) and the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (BSAJ) and directed by David Ussish-kin and John Woodhead respectively A final report was in preparation by the Council for British Research in the Levant but it hasapparently been abandoned


poorly preserved⁶⁵ Iron Age enclosure on the summit of the hill of Tel Jezreel thedate of which has been a controversial subject for the last two decades Despitethe ldquobadly preserved stratardquo⁶⁶ the enclosure was attributed to the 9th centuryBCE the period of the Omride dynasty ldquoon the basis of the limited stratigraphicevidence and in accord with the biblical sourcerdquo⁶⁷ and reaffirmed by David Us-sishkin⁶⁸ This is unfortunate as archaeology in the latter half of 20th centuryshould not have relied on the biblical narrative to determine the chronology ofa site or to establish the date of a particular architectural feature⁶⁹

Only a selection of the Iron Age pottery was published and in the words ofthe late Orna Zimhoni ldquoUnfortunately such an arbitrary collection may omitprecisely the vessels which would enable us to determine the exact date of theassemblagerdquo ⁷⁰ Ceramic parallels for the published material were found in Me-giddo Stratum V (ie VAndash IVB) and Stratum IV (IVA)⁷sup1 which at that time wasdated to the 10thndash9th centuries BCE by Zimhoni Ussishkin and other scholarsThis meant that the published pottery associated with the Jezreel enclosurewas ldquodated generally within the 10th to 9th centuries BCErdquo⁷sup2 Notably following

Preservation was poor due to stone robbing various episodes of destruction and later build-ing from the Iron Age through the Roman-Byzantine period and up to modern times See DavidUssishkin and John Woodhead ldquoExcavations at Tel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993 Second Preliminary Re-portrdquo Levant 26 (1994) 16 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoExcavations at Tel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993rdquo 3 David Ussishkin and John Woodhead ldquoExcavations at Tel Jezreel 1990ndash 1991 PreliminaryReportrdquo TA 19 (1992) 53 David Ussishkin ldquoThe Credibility of the Tel Jezreel Excavations a Rejoinder to Amnon Ben-Torrdquo TA 27 (2000) 248 id ldquoSamaria Jezreel and Megiddo Royal Centers of Omri and Ahabrdquoin Ahab Agonistes the Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty ed Lester L Grabbe (London TampTClark 2007) 301 The original dating of the Megiddo Stratum IV stables serves as an excellent example of howone should not use the biblical narrative as a chronological tool Philip Langstaffe Orde GuyNew Light from Armageddon Second Provisional Report (1927ndash29) on the Excavations at Megiddoin Palestine (Chicago IL University of Chicago Press 1931) 45ndash48 used the verses in 1Kgs915ndash 19 to link Stratum IV to Solomon and to place it the 10th century BCE See Orna Zimhoni ldquoThe Iron Age Pottery from Tel Jezreel ndash an Interim Reportrdquo TA 19 (1992)57ndash58 Zimhonirsquos study focused on the three most common vessel types bowls cooking potsand storage jars similar to her research strategy at Lachish (1990) Sadly she passed away be-fore she could study all the Jezreel pottery Zimhoni ldquoIron Age Pottery from Jezreelrdquo 69 Stratum IVA and certain loci of Stratum IVBcorrespond to Stratum IV the stable city see Franklin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo andead ldquoMegiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo Zimhoni ldquoIron Age Pottery from Jezreelrdquo 69

198 Norma Franklin

Israel Finkelsteinrsquos low chronology correction⁷sup3 and TAUrsquos excavation of the re-maining Stratum IV stable units at Megiddo pottery that was once attributedto the 10th and 9th centuries was down-dated to the 8th century BCE Nonethelessin an attempt to preserve a 9th-century-BCE date for the Jezreel enclosure the Jez-reel pottery was compared by Zimhoni with pottery that she mistakenly pre-sumed belonged to Megiddo Stratum V (VAndash IVB)⁷⁴ Unfortunately the Megiddopottery loci chosen for comparison were contained in the Stratum IV deep con-structional fill below Courtyard 1693⁷⁵ This courtyard is part of the stable city⁷⁶and its constructional fill was laid down when this city was constructed inca 782 BCE This misunderstanding preserved the illusion that the Jezreel enclo-sure was built in the 9th century at the same time as Stratum V (Strata VAndash IVB)

Following criticism on the comparison of the Jezreel enclosure with MegiddoStratum V (ie VAndash IVB⁷⁷) and on the security of the loci that yielded the Jezreelpottery⁷⁸ I analyzed the construction techniques used to build the Jezreel enclo-sure⁷⁹ In brief the enclosure phase at Jezreel and the Stratum IV stable city atMegiddo share similar construction methods that do not appear in the 9th centu-ry BCE namely an artificial podium to create a level plastered surface built-upfoundations mixed ashlar and fieldstone construction the use of strengthening

Israel Finkelstein ldquoThe Archaeology of the United Monarchy An Alternative Viewrdquo Levant27 (1996) 177ndash87 Orna Zimhoni ldquoClues from the Enclosure Fills Pre-Omride Settlement at Tel Jezreelrdquo TA 24(1997) 91 Stratum VA and some loci of IVB belong to the multiphased Stratum V (see FranklinldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo) Gordon Loud the third director of the OIC excavations hadnoted that Stratum V had no less than three phases (Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 7 n 4) Zimhoni thought that the pottery was from the floors of the pillared buildings eg Building1706 in Square Q10 sealed below Courtyard 1693 However although the pillared buildings be-longed to a late phase of Stratum V (Franklin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo 107 FranklinldquoMegiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo 94ndash5 Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 3ndash5 figs 5 and 8) thepottery reanalyzed by Zimhoni was contained within the Stratum IV constructional fill that bur-ied the Stratum V pillared buildings The fill would have been brought in from elsewhere on thesite and therefore the pottery contained in it cannot be used to achieve a secure date Unfortu-nately further confusion was provided by the fact that the Stratum IV fill below Courtyard 1693was registered as Locus -1693 (minus 1693) of Stratum V while the constructional fill below theidentical adjacent courtyard Courtyard 977 was registered as Locus 1674 of Stratum IV (Frank-lin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo 99) Lamon and Shipton Megiddo I 17 figs 34 43 Anabel Zarzecki-Peleg Yadinrsquos Expedition toMegiddo Final Report of the Archaeological Excavations (1960 1966 1967 and 19712 Seasons)(Jerusalem Publications of the Institute of Archaeology 2016) 104 209ndash 10 Franklin ldquoMegiddoStables Reconsideredrdquo 94ndash95 Zarzecki-Peleg Yadinrsquos Expedition to Megiddo 286 Ben-Tor ldquoHazor and Chronologyrdquo Franklin ldquoBefore and after Jezebelrdquo


ashlar piers and marginal drafting Collectively these are all 8th century BCEbuilding techniques⁸⁰ which means that the enclosure phase at Jezreel datesto the 8th century and as correctly noted by Ussishkin and John Woodhead func-tioned as a military base⁸sup1

Jezreelrsquos role was to protect the principal route to the capital Samaria Locat-ed at the junction of the Via Maris and the Ridge Route the local highway run-ning south to the capital Samaria Jezreel was also situated at the narrowestpoint of the Jezreel Valley opposite the village of Shunem⁸sup2 Together thesetwo sites formed a bottleneck that controlled the route west to the LevantineCoast Thus during the apogee of the Northern Kingdom when the enemymdashwhether Aramean or Assyrianmdashwas located to the northeast Jezreel had an im-portant military function helping to protect the trade route to the coast and serv-ing as an ekal māšarti an arsenal and mustering station for the Israelite capital

5 Jezreel after Tiglath-pileser III

After 732 Jezreelrsquos important role as the gatekeeper of Samaria was no longer rel-evant but it still had a function albeit a much diminished one and the site wasnot destroyed⁸sup3 The only destruction observed was a localized layer of burnt de-bris contained within the foundations of the enclosurersquos southeastern tower⁸⁴The pottery-rich debris from the tower Locus 214 contained material that hadcollapsed into the basement from the towerrsquos upper story⁸⁵ Among it was alarge group of restorable storage jars⁸⁶ one of which is of particular interest⁸⁷this vessel has close parallels in the southern Coastal Plain and Judah⁸⁸ and is

Franklin ldquoRevealing Stratum V at Megiddordquo 108 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993rdquo 47 David Ussishkin and John WoodheadldquoExcavations at Tel Jezreel 1994ndash1996 Third Preliminary Reportrdquo TA 24 (1997) 70 Shunem of 2Kgs 4 known today as Sulam Jezreel is mentioned in Hos 14ndash5 22 24 in reference to a historical event Although there isno agreement as to which specific event is referenced it is clearly a military and political one (orpossibly more than one) See Aster ldquoFunction of Jezreelrdquo 33ndash34 This localized destruction has often been interpreted incorrectly as the destruction of the en-tire enclosure however the enclosure was not destroyed and the excavators never claimed thatit was see Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1992ndash1993rdquo 46 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993rdquo 25ndash28 Zimhoni ldquoClues from Enclosure Fillsrdquo figs 10ndash11 Zimhoni ldquoClues from Enclosure Fillsrdquo fig 11 5 Orna Zimhoni ldquoTwo Ceramic Assemblages from Lachish Levels III and IIrdquo TA 17 (1990)27ndash29 fig 17 3 Group IIIE

200 Norma Franklin

best known from contexts dating to the late 8th and 7th centuries BCE⁸⁹ Evidencefor 8th-century and later settlement was found across the site but unfortunatelythere were no secure loci One example is the thick-rimmed cooking pots thatwere found in all excavated areas⁹⁰ The base of a wedge-shaped decoratedbowl found unstratified in Area D (Fig 9 3) suggests a 7thndash6th-centuries-BCE set-tlement⁹sup1 Lastly a late Iron Age red-slipped ring-based carinated bowl wheel-burnished on the inside (Reg No 15538) was found intact in Sq T50 it imitatesan Assyrian bronze bowl⁹sup2 Further evidence for an 8thndash6th-century-BCE settle-ment at Jezreel was provided by the small finds They include two ceramichorse heads that date to the 8thndash7th centuries BCE⁹sup3 and three weights (one hem-atite and two limestone) that compare with similar weights found in MegiddoStratum III or II⁹⁴ A fragment of a stone-carved incense bowl was also comparedwith examples from Megiddo Stratum III or II⁹⁵ The Megiddo examples werepublished by Herbert May⁹⁶ and dated to the 7th and 8th centuries BCE A nearlycomplete stone cosmetic palette was dated to between the 8th and 6th centuriesBCE and has parallels from Megiddo Strata I to III⁹⁷ Four late Iron Age burialswere excavated three of which were very close together Cists G1239 and G1260and Assyrian bathtub Burial G2000⁹⁸ Grave 1260 contained burial goods analabaster palette dated to the 7th century BCE a bronze mirror dating possiblyto the Persian period and a bronze bowl⁹⁹ Lastly two LMLK stamped jar han-dlessup1⁰⁰ provide evidence for activity ca 701 BCEsup1⁰sup1 In short the excavators docu-mented 8thndash7th centuries BCE Iron Age material remains in all the excavated

Zimhoni ldquoClues from Enclosure Fillsrdquo 100 Zimhoni ldquoIron Age Pottery from Jezreelrdquo 68 fig 9 1ndash2 Zimhoni ldquoIron Age Pottery from Jezreelrdquo 68 Zimhoni ldquoClues from Enclosure Fillsrdquo 108 fig 15 2 Raz Kletter ldquoClay Figurines and Scale Weights from Tel Jezreelrdquo TA 24 (1997) 110 Kletter ldquoClay Figurinesrdquo 117 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1992ndash 1993rdquo 40ndash 1 fig 56 Herbert May Material Remains of the Megiddo Cult (Chicago IL University of Chicago Press1935) 19 pl 18 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1994ndash1996rdquo 66ndash67 fig 56 Lamon and Shipton Me-giddo I pls 108ndash 11 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1994ndash1996rdquo 32ndash40 figs 20 22ndash23 26 31ndash34 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1994ndash1996rdquo 33ndash36 figs 27ndash30 The first was a surface find and was held by a local collector in Kibbutz Beit Alfa (informa-tion curtesy of Gabriel Barkay) The second a mmšt stamp was found in a salvage excavationsee Ora Yogev ldquoTel Yizreel 19871988rdquo Hadashot Arkheologiyot ndash Excavations and Surveys in Is-rael 92ndash93 (19881989) 192 fig 160 Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1990ndash 1991rdquo 10 and Gabriel Barkay pers comm


squares that they presumed postdated the enclosuresup1⁰sup2 yet there were no smallfinds that they could attribute to a 9th century BCE enclosure

Finally eight iron arrowheads were retrieved from Areas A and F and in thewords of the excavators ldquofour or five of the iron arrowheads were found in a con-text likely associated with the Iron Age enclosurerdquo They went on to state thatldquothe discovery of iron arrowheads in the context of the enclosure is an importantdatum indicating the use of arrowheads in Palestine in the middle of the 9th cen-tury BCErdquosup1⁰sup3 However more recent research conducted by Yulia Gottlieb hasconclusively shown that iron arrowheads did not become common before theend of the 9th century BCEsup1⁰⁴ In addition according to Gottlieb only two ofthe Jezreel arrowheads can be dated with any certainty specifically the two re-trieved from debris in an installation (L154) near the enclosurersquos gatehouseand they cannot be earlier than the 8th century BCEsup1⁰⁵

An Excursus the Communication Network

Once the Assyrians had annexed a region it was linked to the imperial informa-tion network by a system of roadssup1⁰⁶ known as the hūl šarrisup1⁰⁷ the Kingrsquos Road orthe Royal Road This was a high-speed communications network essential to en-sure efficient Assyrian administration Sections of the hūl šarri were maintained

Ussishkin and Woodhead ldquoTel Jezreel 1994ndash1996rdquo 32 Ibid 64ndash66 fig 55 This is an unfortunate example of circular reasoning ie the date ofthe enclosure was dated based on biblical evidence to the 9th century and the first appearanceof iron arrowheads was therefore pushed back to the 9th century though no examples appearedelsewhere earlier than the 8th century Yulia Gottlieb ldquoBeer-Sheba under Attack a Study of Arrowheads and the Story of Destruc-tion of the Iron Age Settlementrdquo in Beer-Sheba III the Early Iron IIA Enclosed Settlement and theLate Iron IIAndashIron IIB Cities ed Zersquoev Herzog and Lily Singer-Avitz (Tel Aviv Emery and ClaireYass Publications in Archaeology 2016) 1193 Yulia Gottlieb pers comm Radner ldquoThe Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquo 103While there are no Assyrian documents that men-tion the actual road system much can be gleaned from Assyrian state letters see Karen RadnerldquoAn Imperial Communication Network The State Correspondence of the Neo-Assyrian Empirerdquoin State Correspondence in the Ancient World From New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire edKaren Radner (Oxford Oxford University Press 2014) 64 Karen Radner ldquoRoyal Pen Pals the Kings of Assyria in Correspondence with Officials Cli-ents and Total Strangers (8th and 7th Centuries BC)rdquo in Official Epistolography and the Language(s) of Power Proceedings of the First International Conference of the Research Network Imperiumand Officium ed Stephan Prochaacutezka Lucian Reinfandt and Sven Tost (Vienna Austrian Acad-emy of Sciences Press 2015) 63

202 Norma Franklin

by the relevant Assyrian provincial governorsup1⁰⁸ as they were vital for both ad-ministrative and military matterssup1⁰⁹

Also in these newly conquered regionssup1sup1⁰ forts that served as outposts for anAssyrian garrison were established They functioned as military centers and in-formation hubssup1sup1sup1 In this way Assyria was connected via a network of fortressesto the outlying areas facilitating the passage of messengers armies and militarysupplies needed to control the provinces and convey revenue back to the heart-landsup1sup1sup2 The hūl šarri was divided into stages (Ass mardētu) and staging-posts(Ass bēt mardēti plural bēt mardiāte) which were set up at strategic locationsespecially at intersectionssup1sup1sup3 These bēt mardiāte were reserved solely for Assyr-ian usesup1sup1⁴ and were maintained by the local Assyrian governor The term mardē-tu may refer to a strategic location along the route such as an important inter-section rather than indicate the existence of an actual bēt mardētisup1sup1⁵ In anycase it is unlikely that all bēt mardiāte were of a uniform layout or size Ratherthe appellation and function of the different stations must have been determinedby their location within the empire and by the jurisdiction they were under mdash ofa provincial governor or the Assyrian capitalsup1sup1⁶

Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 68 71 Karlheinz Kessler ldquolsquoRoyal Roadsrsquo and Other Questions of the Neo-Assyrian CommunicationSystemrdquo in Assyria 1995 Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian TextCorpus Project ed Simo Parpola and Robert M Whiting (Helsinki Neo-Assyrian Text CorpusProject 1997) 129 Although the Assyrian administrative letters that are available to us today deal almost ex-clusively with the Assyrian frontier region in the east eg Urartu similar correspondence musthave once existed in the west Bradley J Parker ldquoGarrisoning the Empire Aspects of the Construction and Maintenance ofForts on the Assyrian Frontierrdquo Iraq 59 (1997) 77 Fredrick Mario Fales ldquoPalatial Economy in Neo-Assyrian Documentation An Overviewrdquo inPalatial Economy in the Ancient Near East and in the Aegean First Steps towards a Comprehen-sive Study and Analysis ed Pierre Carlier Francis Joannegraves Franccediloise Rougemont and Julien Zur-bach (Pisa Serra 2017) 273 A communication system was probably set up as early as the daysof Shalmaneser III (858ndash824 BCE) see Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 71 but theearliest reference dates to Adad-nerari IIIrsquos time Fales and Postgate Imperial Administration Re-cords Part 2 no 1 9 16 no 2 rev 5 see Kessler ldquoRoyal Roadsrdquo 130 Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 Radner ldquoRoyal Pen Palsrdquo 63 See Kessler ldquoRoyal Roadsrdquo 134 it has also been suggested that the term mardētu denotesthe distance between stages that could be ridden in one day Natalie Naomi May ldquoAdministra-tive and Other Reforms of Sargon II and Tiglath-pileser IIIrdquo SAAB 21 (2015) 95 Kessler ldquoRoyal Roadsrdquo 135


Radner has previously noted that no bēt mardēti has been recognized inthe archaeological recordsup1sup1⁷ however Aster has recently identified one nearTel Hadidsup1sup1⁸ a site located on the direct route to Gezersup1sup1⁹ Although Aster men-tions forts designed for muster and for specifically provisioning the army enroute to a campaign he describes some of these staging posts as Assyrian ad-ministrative centers with specific characteristics including agricultural installa-tionssup1sup2⁰ Karen Radner notes that the bēt mardiāte often located in pre-existingsettlements needed to have the necessary agricultural infrastructure required tosupport the Assyrian envoys and transport animalssup1sup2sup1 Therefore an importantprerequisite of a bēt mardēti would be a small but permanent civilian populationto cultivate the land in order to provide provisionssup1sup2sup2

6 The Role of Megiddo under Assyrian Rule

It is very probable that prior to the invasion of Tiglath-pileser III the Israelite cha-riot units were based at strategically located Megiddo rather than at Samariasup1sup2sup3which was buried deep in the mountainous heartland of ancient Israel Further-more following Tiglath-pileserrsquos invasion it is questionable if Hoshea was al-lowed to keep more than a token chariot force at Samaria Israelite chariotsdo not appear on the Khorsabad reliefs depicting Sargonrsquos defeat of Samariaonly the Assyrian chariots are shownsup1sup2⁴ That is by the time that Samaria fellthe major part of the Israelite chariot force may have been under Assyrian ruleat Megiddo for more than a decade It is recorded that following Sargonrsquos finaldefeat of Samaria he incorporated an Israelite team of fifty chariotssup1sup2⁵ including

Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 Shawn Zelig Aster ldquoAn Assyrian bīt mardite Near Tel Hadidrdquo JNES 74 (2017) 281 Aster ldquoAn Assyrian bīt marditerdquo 288 Aster ldquoAn Assyrian bīt marditerdquo 282ndash84 Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 This is deduced from Asterrsquos reading of two cuneiform tablets found at Tel Hadid whichtestify to the presence of deportees (and whose task may have been to maintain the bēt mardēti)Aster ldquoAn Assyrian bīt marditerdquo 287 There is no evidence for the availability of stables or chariot facilities at Samaria althoughonly the acropolis has been excavated and any stable complexes must have been in the lowercity Norman Franklin ldquoThe Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukin and Sargon IIrsquos Western Cam-paignsrdquo TA 21 (1994) 270 fig 8 Cf Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume Note that a team of fifty chariots is unlikely to repre-sent the full strength of the Israelite chariotry in 732 BCE

204 Norma Franklin

thirteen equestrians whose title was rab uracircte (team commander) into the Assyr-ian army as a distinct Samarian unit Stephanie Dalley pointed to the ambiguityregarding whether the chariot teams were deported or deployed locally but re-jected the idea of local deploymentsup1sup2⁶ She did suggest however that the Israel-ite chariot teams were so professional that they could change allegiance as longas they would continue to employ their professional skillssup1sup2⁷ The Samarian teamof fifty chariots based in the capital would have been an elite unit and so themention of their redeployment by Sargon would have warranted a mention in theAssyrian annals On the other hand that Tiglath-pileser III must have comman-deered the bulk of the Israelite chariot force when he captured Megiddo was ap-parently either considered not noteworthy or a relevant inscription did not sur-vive

Megiddo was not just the provincial capital of a newly created Assyrian prov-ince It was also a military stronghold an inferior version of an ekal māšarti lo-cated on the hūl šarri In an analysis of the Assyrian presence in the Upper Tigrisregion Parker shows that the Assyrians used similar strongholds located on theperiphery to launch military strikes and as supply depots enabling thesestrikessup1sup2⁸ These peripheral strongholds were important communication centersfor military matters and for the procurement of supplies including horsessup1sup2⁹From the time of Tiglath-pileser III the Assyrian militaryrsquos requirement for horsescould not be met solely by tribute a royal horse agent (Ass tamkār sisē) was em-ployed to purchase horses for the Assyrian armysup1sup3⁰ The horse training and trad-ing center at Megiddo was designed to deal with hundreds of horses at a timetraining and selling them mdash not just as a chariot team of two or three horses butas complete chariot squadrons of twenty or fifty chariotssup1sup3sup1 Megiddorsquos role thuscontinued as an established bēt kāri that specialized in the training and tradingof horses Similar specialized Assyrian trading posts are known from the centralZagros regionsup1sup3sup2 A bēt kāri was originally established in Gaza by Tiglath-pileserIII when he conquered the city in 734 BCEsup1sup3sup3 and Megiddorsquos location on the hūl

Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalryrdquo 34ndash36 Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalryrdquo 39 Bradley J Parker The Mechanics of Empire The Northern Frontier of Assyria as a Case Studyin Imperial Dynamics (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001) 265 Parker ldquoGarrisoning the Empirerdquo 79 Dalley ldquoForeign Chariotry and Cavalryrdquo 31 44ndash47 See Franklin ldquoMegiddo Stables Reconsideredrdquo Younger ldquoAssyrian Economic Impactrdquo 184ndash85 n 14 Yamada ldquoKārus on the Frontiersrdquo 64 69


šarri which was also an important Assyrian trade routesup1sup3⁴ would have contin-ued Megiddo would have also been an invaluable asset to the Assyrianseven after Tiglath-pileser III particularly during the campaigns to the west ofShalmaneser V and Sargon II In fact even after Sargonrsquos final annihilation ofSamaria his re-establishment of dominion over the Philistine coast and theopening up of the Gaza trading post the kāru of Egypt Megiddorsquos dual functionas a specialized bēt kāri and as a military stronghold was still relevant PossiblyMegiddo was still used as a mustering station by Sennacherib as late as 701 BCEbut with relative quiet in the west and the Assyrian policy of population transfernew domestic quarters eventually replaced the stables Cavalry forces took overfrom the chariot units and at Megiddo the stable complexes and the chamberedgates became obsolete and the full blown orthogonal planned city of StratumIII arose

7 The Role of Jezreel under Assyrian Rule

Jezreel located on the border with the rump state of Samaria would have playeda crucial role under Tiglath-pileser III by controlling access to and from SamariaThat is Jezreel once the gatekeeper that protected Samaria had changed sides

The Assyrian army travelled vast distances and there are various scenes onthe Neo-Assyrian reliefs that depict the army camped and victualled en routeto or at a battle sitesup1sup3⁵ On average the Assyrian army could cover twenty-two kilometers per day if it was marching with no battles plundering or foragingon the waysup1sup3⁶ Camps were set up in strategic locations often at a crossroad butalways where there was pasturage for the horsessup1sup3⁷ In unstable areas usually onthe fringes of the empire a permanent camp (Ass birtu plural birāti) would beerectedsup1sup3⁸ These military outposts were sometimes left abandoned but withtheir walls intact ready to be reused if necessary This way a temporary campcould be set up within a fortified areasup1sup3⁹ The camp could be oval rectangular

These routes were vital for trade with Egypt Younger ldquoAssyrian Economic Impactrdquo182ndash84 n 9 Fredrick Mario Fales and Monica Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practices in Assyrian Mili-tary Encampmentsrdquo in Paleonutrition and Food Practices in the Ancient Near East Towards aMultidisciplinary Approach ed Lucio Milano (Padova sargon 2014) 414 Younger ldquoFall of Samariardquo 472 Fales and Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practicesrdquo 415 Fales and Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practicesrdquo 414 Fales and Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practicesrdquo 417

206 Norma Franklin

or even square in plan with a defensive wallsup1⁴⁰ Jezreel a border site on the fringeof the empire located at the intersection of the Via Maris a major hūl šarri withthe road to Samaria made it a perfect location for an Assyrian border outpost abirtu

Following the fall of Samaria Jezreelrsquos role as an Assyrian border outpostwas no longer relevant however just as the bēt mardēti at Tel Hadid was onthe direct route to Gezersup1⁴sup1 so Jezreel was on the direct route to Megiddo andon to the kāru of Gaza Jezreel would have been an obvious choice to be trans-formedsup1⁴sup2 into a bēt mardēti Located on the international highway in an areaof agricultural fecundity Jezreel could support a small but necessary civilianpopulation to produce and process the grain and wine required to provisionthe Assyrian army A large winery complexsup1⁴sup3 and the ca one hundred rock-cut underground storage pits sup1⁴⁴ dotted over the summit of Jezreel attest to itsagricultural nature and suitability as a bēt mardētisup1⁴⁵ This change of functionis reflected in Hos 224sup1⁴⁶ ldquoAnd the earth will produce grain and wine andoil and they will cause Jezreel to producerdquo ( שוריתה־תאוןגדה־תאהנעתץראהו

לאערזי־תאונעיםהורהציה־תאו )sup1⁴⁷ A bēt mardēti had no need for large stable com-plexessup1⁴⁸ although it was responsible for the fast envoy system (Ass kalliu)which necessitated that a fresh pair of mules be available at each stationsup1⁴⁹They did not need a fancy stable

Fales and Rigo ldquoEveryday Life and Food Practicesrdquo 415ndash 16 ldquoAssyrian bīt marditerdquo 288 Aster ldquoFunction of Jezreelrdquo 41 argues that Hos 12bndash25 contains a vision regarding Jezreelchanging its role that is Jezreel is transformed from a military compound to an agricultural cen-ter Although this is interpreted as a vision of Hosea (Aster ldquoFunction of Jezreelrdquo 45) it was infact a reality Hosea the only Northern Kingdom prophet portrays the Northern Kingdom at thetime of king Hoshea cf Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Source for the Last Days of theKingdom of Israelrdquo BZ 59 (2015) 233ndash34 236 Norma Franklin Jennie Ebeling and Philippe Guillaume ldquoAn Ancient Winery in JezreelrdquoBeit Mikra 60 (2015) 9ndash18 (in Hebrew) Jennie Ebeling Norma Franklin and Philippe Guil-laume ldquoThe Jezreel Wineryrdquo (forthcoming) Norma Franklin ldquoExploring the Function of Bell Shaped Pits With a View to Iron Age Jez-reelrdquo in Lawrence Stager Volume (Eretz-Israel in press) 76ndash82 See Aster ldquoAssyrian bīt marditerdquo 287 Hos 224 in the Hebrew or 222 in KJV and other versions See Aster ldquoFunction of Jezreelrdquo 36 Radner ldquoImperial Communication Networkrdquo 73 Radner ldquoRoyal Pen Palsrdquo 64



Neither Megiddo nor Jezreel were destroyed by Tiglath-pileser III in 732 BCE Infact the opposite is true both sites were of use to the Assyrians as they expand-ed and controlled their empire in the west

Megiddorsquos dual role as a regional ekal māšarti and as a bēt kāri specializingin the trade of trained chariot horses would have been an invaluable asset Ti-glath-pileser III chose Megiddo as the capital of the newly founded frontier prov-ince of Magidducirc Only following the final defeat of Samaria by Sargon II did Me-giddo become a fully-fledged provincial capital however this did not happenovernight It was only with the change from chariotry to cavalry that the stableswere dismantled and Megiddo rebuilt to house a new population of Assyrian de-portees

Jezreelrsquos role as a strategic fortified site a minor ekal māšarti and musteringstation that protected the Israelite capital changed under Tiglath-pileser III tocontrolling the passage to Samaria Located on the very fringe of the empirein an unstable area it could have served as a permanent camp a birtu forthe Assyrians Following the fall of Samaria Jezreelrsquos location on a majortrade route a hūl šarri together with its agricultural potential made it eminentlysuited to be turned into a bēt mardēti and continue to serve its Assyrian mastersin a new way

208 Norma Franklin

Part IV Working with the Book of Kingsthe Text

Timo Tekoniemisup1

Between Two Differing Editions SomeNotable Text-Critical Variants in 2 Kings 17

1 Introduction

The chapter 2Kgs 17 is a well-known playfield (or minefield) for all sorts of liter-ary and redaction critical theories The first six verses of the chapter even containsome of the most challenging historical puzzles in the Book of Kings as seen inthe many contributions of this volume While the historical and literary criticalreconstructions have dominated the scholarly discussion surprisingly little inter-est has been given to the text-critical challenges of the chapter On the basis ofsome recently published commentaries on 2Kings one could even come to theconclusion that there are no notable text-critical variants in the chapter

Based on Alfred Rahlfsrsquo widely used ldquosemi-criticalrdquo edition of the Septuagintthis would indeed seem to be the case the majority text of Septuagint 2Kings(ldquo4 Reignsrdquo) agrees with the Masoretic text (MT) almost completely Howeverthis happens for a good reason the majority of Greek witnesses attest to theso-called kaige revision which harmonized the Greek text towards that of(proto-)MTsup2 There is however one textual tradition that has on many occasionsescaped this Hebraizing revision namely the Antiochian (L) tradition Often orig-inal Old Greek (OG) readings can also be found in the daughter versions of theSeptuagint (LXX) especially in the Old Latin (OL) traditions Rahlfs was not yetaware of this kaige phenomenon and because of this he in fact considered theAntiochian text form as inferior to the majority text

Because of the kaige revision many differences between the original Septua-gint translation and the Masoretic text have likely been lost forever However in2Kgs 17 the Antiochian text has clearly preserved some vestiges of the old textFurthermore the first third of the chapter has also been preserved in an OldLatin manuscript Palimpsestus Vindobonensis (La115) which has been recently

I want to thank Tuukka Kauhanen for his kind and helpful remarks on an earlier draft of thispaper See James K Aitken ldquoThe Origins of ΚΑΙ ΓΕrdquo in Biblical Greek in Context Essays in Honour ofJohn A L Lee ed James K Aitken and Trevor Evans (Leuven Peeters 2015) 21ndash40 for furtherinformation on the kaige revision

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-010

concluded to often preserve a very old and reliable textsup3 The manuscript seemsto have often ndash if not always ndash escaped the kaige revision even when other wit-nesses have not Therefore especially when the Antiochian text and La115 agreeagainst the majority text we can in most cases be fairly sure that the reading isan ancient one⁴

It has become evident in the research that already the Vorlage (ie the He-brew base text) of Septuagint 1ndash2Kings differed drastically from the Masoreticedition of the books This is especially noteworthy in 1Kings where the kaige re-vision has not faded out the differences between the two editions Even in 2Kingsthere can be found some differences in the compositional layout of these twomain versions In fact 2Kgs 17 is likely to be one such passage where these edi-tions originally differed from each other considerably⁵

For the edition of La115 see Bonifatius Fischer ldquoPalimpsestus Vindobonensis A Revised Edi-tion of L115 for Samuel-Kingsrdquo BIOSCS 16 (1983) 13ndash87 For the characteristics of La115rsquos textsee Tuukka Kauhanen ldquoSeptuagint in the West the Significance of the Post-Lucianic Latin Wit-nesses for the Textual History of Kingsrdquo in Die Septuaginta ndash Orte und Intentionen ed SiegfriedKreuzer Martin Meiser and Marcus Sigismund (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2016) 309ndash25 TimoTekoniemi ldquoIs There a (Proto‐)Lucianic Stratum in the Text of 1 Kings of the Old Latin Manu-script La115rdquo in The Antiochean Text and the Antiochean Manuscripts ed Kristin De Troyer (Goumlt-tingenVandenhoeck amp Ruprecht forthcoming) Some of the text of 2Kgs 17 has also preserved inthe Old Latin witness LaM (also known as La91-95) see for an edition of LaM Antonio Moreno LasGlosas Marginales de Vetus Latina en Las Biblias Vulgatas Espantildeolas 1ndash2 Reyes (Madrid CSIC1992) 97ndash 144 and a study of some of its most notable readings by Julio Trebolle ldquoReadings ofthe Old Latin (Beuron 91ndash95) Reflecting ldquoAdditionsrdquo of the Antiochene Text in 3ndash4 Kingdomsrdquoin The Legacy of Bartheacutelemy 50 Years after Les Devanciers drsquoAquila ed Anneli Aejmelaeus andTuukka Kauhanen (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2017) 120ndash45 Even though some Lucianic readings may have very sporadically seeped into La115 for themost part the agreements between the two are proto-Lucianic see Tekoniemi ldquoIs There a(Proto‐)Lucianic Stratumrdquo La115 does have however some highly intriguing characteristics in2Kgs that are found nowhere else in the Greek tradition the death narrative of Elisha(1314ndash21) is transposed after verse 1030 the chapter 16 is missing between 15 and 17 (andwas likely originally situated after chapter 17) and in chapter 17 verse 7 is in a completely differ-ing form from MTLXX verse 8 is missing and verses 9ndash 14 and 15ndash19 have been transposedwith each other As can be seen a study of La115rsquos text in 2Kgs 17 could yield some interestingtext-historical results See Julio Trebolle ldquoTextual Pluralism and Composition of the Books of Kings 2 Kings172ndash23rdquo in After Qumran Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts the Historical Booksed Hans Ausloos Benedicte Lemmelijn and Julio Trebolle (Leuven Peeters 2012) 213ndash26and Timo Tekoniemi ldquoOn the Verge of Textual Literary and Redaction Criticism The Case of2 Kings 177rdquo in The Antiochean Text and the Antiochean Manuscripts ed Kristin De Troyer (Goumlt-tingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht forthcoming)

212 Timo Tekoniemi

In this paper three substantial text-critical cases will be analyzed Most ofthem are interesting not only from the textual but also from a broader methodo-logical viewpoint since their analysis could also have repercussions for the his-torical and literary theories of the chapter or even the Book of Kings as a wholeThis is indeed how text-criticism and literary criticism converge with each otherwhen the most original text is found in other witnesses than MT also a reassess-ment of the literary theories bearing on the said text is in order

2 Hoshea The Worst or Not-So-Worst Kingof Israel

2Kgs 172 has for long been a matter of debate because of its strange and unex-pected judgment of Hoshea Unlike what could be expected according to the MTHoshea ldquodid evil in the eyes of Yahweh only not as much as the kings of Israelwho were before himrdquo Hoshea is thus apparently said to have been better thansome or even any of the other kings of Israel There is nothing in the textthat would evoke such a lenient indiction however unless one takes the lackof a customary remark of Jeroboamrsquos sin in verses 1ndash6 as an indication of himno more ldquowalking in the sin of Jeroboamrdquo As the last king of Israel duringwhose reign the northern kingdom was exiled the complete opposite could beexpected that is Hoshea even being the most evil king of Israel

To alleviate these problems some scholars have proposed that possibly theturbulent political climate of Hoshearsquos reign did not simply allow Hoshea tofocus on the cultic misdeeds of Israelrsquos previous kings⁶ This idea runs into prob-lems however when it is noted that even Zechariah who only reigned for6 months and whose reign most probably was even more turbulent than thatof Hoshea is said in 2Kgs 159 to have sinned ldquolike his fathers had donerdquo Onthe other hand according to the rabbinic tradition Hoshea let the northern Is-raelites take freely part in the cult at Jerusalem⁷ which would have of course

John Gray I amp II Kings A commentary (London SCM Press 1964) 583 (ldquoHis comparative virtueaccording to Deuteronomic principles was a virtue of necessityrdquo) Gwilym H Jones 1 and 2 Kings(Grand Rapids MI Cambridge Eerdmans 1984) 546 Some have also noted that Hoshearsquos val-iant resistance against Assyria could have earned him this honor see Norman H Snaith I and IIKings (New York Abingdon Press 1954) 278 Volkmar Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige (ZuumlrichTheologischer Verlag 1998) 95 However nowhere else does standing up to a foreign power by aking of Israel seem to evoke such positive evaluation Cf Taʿan 30bndash31a Giṭ 88a B Bat 121b This would be partly in line with the 2Chr 301ndash 12where Hezekiah sends letters to the northern Israelites inviting them to take part in his Pass-


mitigated his blame even in the eyes of the Deuteronomistic Historian⁸ Howeverthere are no traces of this in the text itself

It has also been noted by the medieval rabbi Rashi that after Dan was lostto the Assyrians in 2Kgs 1529 there would indeed be a good reason to arguewhy Hoshea simply could not have been as evil as his predecessor(s) with theloss of Dan also the blame for one of the golden calves of Jeroboam wouldhave been canceled⁹ Therefore Hoshea only had the sole calf at Bethel underhis rule from the beginning of his reign Since the ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo usuallyequated with him making the calves is the most important transgression Israelrsquoskings are blamed for Hoshea could have then indeed been at most only half asbad as any of the kings before him

However most theories have not taken into account the text-critical evi-dencewhich gives a completely different picture of Hoshea according to the An-tiochian text and the Old Latin witnesses La115 and LaM Hoshea was indeed themost evil king of Israel ldquoAnd he did evil before Lord more than all who were be-fore himrdquo As the reading of L is backed up by both OL witnesses and can quiteeasily be translated back into Hebrewsup1⁰ it is very likely that the reading is at leastproto-Lucianic (and therefore not a ldquoperversion of Lucianrdquosup1sup1) and most probablyOld Greeksup1sup2

over The results were not stellar however and nothing is said about the king of Israel letting hispeople go freely but according to the Chronicler some Israelites indeed do take part in the fes-tivities To DtrH the ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo most likely was simply the decentralization of the Yahwisticcult from Jerusalem not the making of the idolatrous golden calves see Juha Pakkala ldquoJero-boam without Bullsrdquo ZAW 120 (2008) 501ndash25 Arie Van der Kooij ldquoZur Exegese von II Reg 172rdquo ZAW 96 (1984) 109ndash 12 Cf Miqrarsquoot Gedolot2Kgs 172 Rashi concludes that because there were no more calves to worship Hoshea must havelet the Israelites take part in the cult of Jerusalem The Vorlage likely read וינפל)ויה(רשאלכמהוהייניעבערהשעיו As noted by James Montgomery A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Kings(Edinburgh TampT Clark 1986 ed Henry Snyder Gehman) 464 and later echoed by many othercommentators Similarly Andreacutes Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Edit The Oxford Hebrew Bible Edition of 2 Kings171ndash23rdquo in After Qumran Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts The Historical Booksed Hans Ausloos Benedicte Lemmelijn and Julio Trebolle (BETL 246 Leuven Peeters 2012)227ndash43 esp 230ndash31 Julio Trebolle Centena in Libros Samuelis et Regum Variantes Textualesy Composicioacuten Literaria en los Libros de Samuel y Reyes (Madrid CSIC 1989) 189

214 Timo Tekoniemi

How should this difference between the texts be assessed Many commentatorsbeginning with Bernhard Stade have held that the reading ldquomore thanrdquo is a latechange motivated by the context it would indeed be easier to see the last mon-arch of Israel as the most evil one while him being not as evil as others could beargued to be ideologically the lectio difficiliorsup1sup3 On the other hand the fact thatHoshea does not seem to do anything to earn himself his judgment may just aswell have prompted the MT editor as Andreacutes Piquer notes to change the judg-ment it does indeed seem strange for such a minor character to possibly havebeen worse than Jeroboam or especially the Omride kings the absolute epitomesof evil in the Book of Kingssup1⁴ Furthermore the arguments given above for mak-ing sense of the reading of MT could also be at least to certain extent reversedfor instance it would not seem impossible that a later reviser similarly to Rashiin the medieval times noticed the second calf missing in the times of Hoshea ndashand more importantly the fact that Hoshea is also not accused of the ldquosin of Jer-oboamrdquo ndash and deducted that as a result of this he indeed could not have been theworst king of Israelsup1⁵ Therefore both sides of the argument fail to convince com-pletely on their own as they are reversible with each othersup1⁶ There is a need forcumulative evidence

Bernhard Stade The Books of Kings (Leipzig Hinrichs 1904) 260 Similarly also AlbertŠanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige Das Zweite Buch der Koumlnige (Muumlnster Aschendorffsche Verlags-buchhandlung 1912) 212 and many others Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Editrdquo 237 Christoph Levin ldquoDie Froumlmmigkeit der Koumlnige von Israel und Judardquo in Houses Full of AllGood Things Essays in Memory of Timo Veijola ed Juha Pakkala and Martti Nissinen (HelsinkiFinnish Exegetical Society 2008) 129ndash68 indeed assumes that Hoshea stopped with Jero-boamrsquos sin ldquoDer letzte Koumlnig Hoschea schlieszliglich unterlaumlszligt die Suumlnde Jeroboams ganzrdquo (156) See for discussion of the reversibility of text-critical arguments Adrian Schenker ldquoMan bittetum das Gegenargument Von der Eigenart textkritischer Argumentationrdquo ZAW 122 (2010)53ndash63 and Ville Maumlkipelto Timo Tekoniemi and Miika Tucker ldquoLarge-Scale Transposition as


The solution may be found when the other similar judgment formulae aretext-critically assessed While most Israelite kings are simply condemned forldquodoing evil in the eyes of Yahwehrdquo without any comparisons the Omridekings Omri (1Kgs 1625) Ahab (1630 33) Ahaziah (2254) and Joram (2Kgs118b OG32 MT) are all said to have been either worse (Omri Ahab) or as evil(Ahaziah Joram) as their predecessors However this picture changes somewhatafter the textual evidence is taken into account in 1Kgs 2254 Ahaziah is in L saidnot to have provoked Yahweh ldquolike all that his father had donerdquo ( השע־רשאלככ

ויבא ) as in MT but in fact παρὰ πάντας τοὺς γενομένους ἔμπροσθεν αὐτουldquomore than all who were before himrdquosup1⁷ The fact that there is in two different pla-ces a similar difference between the witnesses raises a question are these differ-ences simply coincidentalsup1⁸

The most important thing to note is that both Ahaziah and Hoshea rule afterAhab This is important since Ahab is often thought to be the main antagonistand evildoer in the Book of Kings which is indeed the case on the basis of MTrsquostext no-one else after him is said to have been worse (although Ahaziah is saidto have been as evil as him) than his predecessors In OG this is of course not thecase even though Ahab is clearly the ldquomain villainrdquo of Kings he is nevertheless

an Editorial Technique in the Textual History of the Hebrew Biblerdquo TC A Journal of Biblical Tex-tual Criticism 22 (2017) 1ndash16 The rest of the LXXwitnesses give the text as κατὰ πάντα τὰ γενόμενα ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ ldquoac-cording to all that (τὰ) was before himrdquo It seems like this text has been partially corrected to-wards the MT by kaige reviser by simply changing the preposition παρὰ of L to κατὰ but leavingthe ldquoall [whothat] were before himrdquo intact (the difference between the neuter plural of kaige andmasculine plural of OG is significant in Greek only since both translate the Hebrew רשא ) Inter-estingly the Hexaplaric witnesses have not been further harmonized towards MT either Anaccidental change κατα ~ παρα is possible although not one of the likeliest of mistakes Thereading of L is also supported by LaM Et servivit Baalim et adoravit illi superponens in malitiauniversis quae gesta erant ante eum Adrian Schenker Aumllteste Textgeschichte der KoumlnigsbuumlcherDie hebraumlische Vorlage der urspruumlnglichen Septuaginta als aumllteste Textform der Koumlnigsbuumlcher (Fri-bourg Academic Press 2004) 100 also notes that in 2Kgs 118d (not found in MT) L has a harsh-er condemnation of Ahaziah as L adds ldquoand Yahweh became angry (L +towards him and) to-wards the house of Ahabrdquo While this is true this plus of L is probably best seen as arecensional Lucianic addition It is theoretically possible that the changes in L are in both cases due to the Lucianic reviserbut this does not seem very likely while the reviser indeed changes many readings (for instancethe use of the preposition παρὰ instead of ὑπὲρ [cf 1Kgs 1625 33] may be recensional) he usu-ally did it so that the meaning of the text did not notably change ndash at least as much as in thesecases

216 Timo Tekoniemi

not the worst of the bunch but only gets the third place after two quite insignif-icant kings (Ahaziah only rules for 2 years and Hoshea for 9 years)sup1⁹

This is in fact not the only case where LXX gives a more ambivalent pictureof Ahab for example Philippe Hugo argues that in 1Kgs 17ndash 19 the picture ofAhab differs between the unrepentant evildoer of MT and a more ambivalentking of LXXsup2⁰ Because of this some scholars have proposed that LXX wantedto improve or ldquowhitewashrdquo the quite dark picture of Ahab given by MT for ldquomid-rashic purposesrdquosup2sup1 While not impossible this does not seem very likely it ismore conceivable for evil characters to become more evil in the textual processthan the opposite ndash especially when we are dealing with Ahab the evildoer parexcellence In this case it seems that the picture of Ahab was indeed blackwash-ed by MT by later changing the judgments of two quite insignificant kings frombeing the most evil to either being as evil as Ahab or even to possibly being theleast evil of all the kings of Israelsup2sup2 Furthermore in chapter 17 the king(s) of Is-rael are not blamed for the destruction but the people which is ideologicallyunusual in the Book of Kingssup2sup3 It could be argued that the MT edition putseven more blame on the people (thus ldquodemocratizingrdquo the sin of Jeroboam) byfurther trivializing the role of Hoshea The ldquoharmonizedrdquo reading of OG in2Kgs 172 is thus likely the most original judgment of Hoshea

This textual problem of verse 2 has further redactional significance Accord-ing to MT Hoshea who ldquodid what was wrong in the eyes of Yahweh though notlike the kings of Israel before himrdquo seems to do nothing particularly wrong ndash ap-parently he did not even walk in the sin(s) of Jeroboam This is of course bafflingIf we are to understand like the early rabbis that Hoshea being the not-worst

The late addition 1Kgs 2125 further supports the idea of Ahab being seen as the most evilking Even Manasseh the reason for Judahrsquos demise is compared to Ahab and is told to haveldquomade an Asherah like Ahab had donerdquo (2Kgs 213) Therefore Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Editrdquo237 notes on Hoshea ldquohellip MT tried to smoothen incongruities in the narrative as it would cer-tainly seem odd that this late minor monarch whose reign fills barely a couple lines in the nar-rative of Kings could be more evil than Jeroboam who split Israel or than Omri and Ahab tar-gets of choice of biblical invective against the Northern Kingdomrdquo See Philippe Hugo Les deux Visages drsquoEacutelie (Fribourg Academic Press 2006) 326ndash27 sim-ilarly Andrzej Turkanik Of Kings and Reigns a Study of Translation Technique in the GammaGamma Section of 3 Reigns (1 Kings) (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2008) 207 David Gooding ldquoAhab According to the Septuagintrdquo ZAW 76 (1964) 269ndash80 esp 277ndash79idem ldquoProblems of Text and Midrash in the Third Book of Reignsrdquo Textus 7 (1969) 1ndash29esp 26ndash27 Similarly Schenker Aumllteste Textgeschichte 116ndash22 Hartmut Roumlsel ldquoWhy 2 Kings 17 Does Not Constitute a Chapter of Reflection in the lsquoDeutero-nomic Historyrsquordquo JBL 128 (2009) 85ndash90 esp 88ndash89


king means that the worship of the calves in Bethel andor Dan had alreadyceasedsup2⁴ the condemnation must come from late redactors since it is unlikelythat the calves were yet present in the Historianrsquos textsup2⁵ Of course the factthat the OG gives in 172 a completely differing reading already shows us thateven the passages we may have thought to be the most ancient ones couldhave been completely changed during later transmissional processes Thus itis exceedingly important to conduct the text-critical work first with no redaction-al preconceptions concerning the passages in question

3 The Historical Problems of Verse 4Adrammelek the Ethiopian and the Tributeof Hoshea

Verse 174 has incited quite a lot of discussion from the historical viewpointmainly because of the strange name of the Egyptian Pharaoh ldquoSocirc the king ofEgyptrdquo to whom Hoshea sent messengerssup2⁶ Despite the several dynasties andPharaohs reigning simultaneously at the time of Israelrsquos last yearssup2⁷ no Pharaoheasily recognized as ldquoSocircrdquo seems to have ruled during Israelrsquos demise ThereforeSocirc has been identified with numerous Pharaohs such as Tefnakht Osorkon IVor Piye and sometimes not even as a personal name but as a name of a city Saisndash while some have proposed that the ldquonamerdquo is in fact a job description forldquocommanderrdquo (ṯ3) or more likely ldquokingrdquo (nsw)sup2⁸ No scholarly consensus hasbeen formed on the identification of Socirc

As argued by Van der Kooij ldquoZur Exegeserdquo 111ndash 12 The calves in 1Kgs 1228ndash30 are likely a late invention See Pakkala ldquoJeroboamrsquos Sin andBethel in 1Kgs 1225ndash33rdquo BN 112 (2002) 86ndash94 The text of MT is clear and lucid and most probably should not be emended in any wayMost of the emendations have indeed been born of the need to make the name ldquoSocircrdquo work inthe historical context of the text not because of problems of the text itself See Kenneth Kitchen The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100ndash650 B C) (WarminsterAris amp Phillips 1973) 362ndash72 For an overall picture of the problems pertaining to ldquoSocircrdquo see John Day ldquoThe Problem of lsquoSocircKing of Egyptrsquo in 2 Kings XVII 4rdquo VT 42 (1992) 289ndash301

218 Timo Tekoniemi

The Greek witnesses have rarely been considered when assessing this problemMostly they have been brushed aside as either irrelevant or as early attempts tomake sense of the strange name ldquoSocircrdquosup2⁹ As expected most manuscripts indeedgive simply the MT name or a variation of it ΣωαΣωβα or a corrupted form

See eg Duane Christensen ldquoThe Identity of King Socirc in Egypt (2 Kings XVII 4)rdquo VT 39(1989) 140ndash53 esp 141 (ldquohellip the most significant of the earliest attempts to eliminate ldquoKingSordquohelliprdquo) Donald Redford ldquoA Note on II Kings 174rdquo JSSEA 11 (1981) 75ndash76 esp 75 (ldquoLucian sub-stitutedrdquo) Day ldquoThe Problem of lsquoSocirc king of Egyptrsquordquo 298 also gives a lengthy mention of theLucianic reading but discusses it no further


Σηγωρsup3⁰ However the proto-Lucianic (= OG) text of L and the OL witnesses dif-fers from the majority tradition calling him possibly even more strangelyldquoAdrammelek the Ethiopian who dwelt in Egyptrdquo Such a reading hardly cameto be because of an accident and OG clearly reflects an independent literary tra-dition from MTsup3sup1

Adrammelek is obviously neither an Ethiopian nor an Egyptian name andon basis of its distribution it seems rather like a ldquostock-namerdquo that could beused for different purposes in 2Kgs 1731 it reappears as a name of a foreigngod and in 1937 (= Isa 3738) as a name of a son of Sennacherib ndash albeitthere it could also be a genuine corrupted historical namesup3sup2 There seems tobe thus no historically relevant information in the name here ndash quite the contra-ry the name seems like a literary construct There is however one interestingand historically quite legitimate remark in the OG text that is lacking from MTat the time of Hoshearsquos reign both upper and even lower Egypt seem to havebeen at least nominally under the rule of the Ethiopian 25th dynastysup3sup3 Howshould one then assess these two completely differing names ldquoSocircrdquo and ldquoAdram-melekrdquo

Σηγωρ B CI a f 64txt 381 55 158 244 318 342 372] Σωα AV 247 121 64mg-488 71 245 Σωβα rel Thereading Σηγωρ of B-tradition is not likely to stem from the majority text and seems to be a tran-scription of רעצ see Dominique Bartheacutelemy Critique Textuelle de lrsquoAncien Testament vol 1 (Goumlt-tingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1982) 408 according to whom this is ldquoune assimilation mal-heureuserdquo This happenstance may be somehow connected to the textual confusion in the latterpart of the verse where even MT gives a double reading והרצעיו hellip והרסאיו and where the OG wit-nesses have the mysterious plus ὕβρισε (τὸν Ὠσῆ) ὑβρίζω possibly deriving from the same rootas the mystical Σηγωρ רעצ (ldquoto be insignificantrdquo Targums ldquohifpi to subordinateshamerdquo) Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Editrdquo 234ndash35 238 One has to wonder whether this recurrence of the name in 1731 has something to do withthe mystical appearance or disappearance of Socirc or Adrammelek in verse 174 Simo ParpolaldquoThe Murderer of Sennacheribrdquo Death in Mesopotamia ed Bendt Alster (Copenhagen Akade-misk Forlag 1980) 171ndash82 esp 174 has convincingly argued that the wrongly spelt nameAdrammelek of 2Kgs 1937 can indeed be found in the Assyrian sources as a son and murdererof Sennacherib in the form Arda-dNINLIacuteL to be read in Neo-Assyrian times as Arda-Mullissi Ac-cording to Parpola the form Adrammelek can be explained as a scribal error (from the form ldquoAr-damelosrdquo for instance)While this is indeed likely the reason for this ldquoscribal mistakerdquomay alsobe harmonization towards the two other mentions of the name ldquoAdrammelekrdquo before the one in1937 Piquer ldquoWhat Text to Editrdquo 235 hypothesizes that Hoshea may have been historicallysomehow linked to this murder and conspiracy as shown by OG but that the mention of hisinvolvement in the text has become distorted in the long history of the text Perhaps thename was even understood at some point as a sort of ldquostock-name for a conspiratorrdquo becauseof its appearance in 1937 and was taken over from there Kitchen Third Intermediate Period 362ndash8 Donald Redford Egypt Canaan and Israel in An-cient Times (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1992) 345ndash47

220 Timo Tekoniemi

Because of these unexpected traits of OG Adrian Schenker argues that theMT tradition could in fact be reflecting a textual situation posterior to that ofthe OGsup3⁴ First Adrammelekrsquos ldquojob descriptionrdquo is completely lacking and hasto be deducted from the context he could be anything from a mercenary to aking (which could in a way quite well reflect the confusing state of the Egyptianpolitics of the time) In MT there is no room for any confusion On the other handthe name ldquoSocircrdquo is indeed much more Egyptian a name (possibly even a transcrip-tion of nsw ldquokingrdquo or an abbreviation of (O)so(rkon)) than ldquoAdrammelekrdquo andit would be easy to see why the strange remark of an Ethiopian called Adramme-lek who lives in Egypt would have later been changed into much more under-standable and possibly even Egyptian-sounding ldquoSocirc [that is] king of Egyptrdquosince the literary motive of Israelites depending on the help of Egypt and itsking is somewhat common in the Hebrew Bible also here it would makesense that Hoshea asked for help from ldquothe king of Egyptrdquosup3⁵ Thirdly the factthat the name ldquoAdrammelekrdquo confusingly appears in two completely differingcontexts elsewhere makes it likely that MT has here smoothened a text thatseems quite contradictory with itself how could Hoshea send messengers toan Ethiopian who concurrently seems to be a son of Sennacherib and evenmore confusingly is revered as a god by the later Mesopotamian inhabitantsof the province of Samariasup3⁶ It is thus quite easy to see why the text wouldhave been changed to the MT version while the opposite a change from thelucid MT to the somewhat strange and contradictory OG text would be quite un-expected

Stepping from the realm of textual criticism to that of literary theories JulioTrebolle has argued that the narrative of the Assyrian king finding out aboutHoshearsquos conspiracy in verse 4aα is itself a later interpolation to the verseand that MT has in the verse overall a later version of the textsup3⁷ Indeed inOG version there seems to be a resumptive repetition (Wiederaufnahme) in verses3b and 4aβ both recounting the fact that ldquoHoshea bore tribute to the king of As-syriardquo indicating that 4aα might be a later interpolationsup3⁸ Unlike in MT in OGHoshea never ceases paying tribute which is surprising since in MT version this

Schenker Aumllteste Textgeschichte 117ndash 19 Cf 2Kgs 1821 24 Hos 711 122 Jer 377ndash8 Isa 302ndash5 311ndash2 Ezek 292ndash7 See Matthieu Richelle ldquoIntentional Omissions in the Textual History of the Books of KingsIn Search of Methodological Criteriardquo Sem 58 (2016) 135ndash57 esp 141ndash46 for a similar omissionof contradicting information in 1Kgs 1426 Julio Trebolle ldquoLa Caida de Samaria Critica Textual Literaria e Historica de 2 Re 17 3ndash6rdquoSalmanticensis 28 (1981) 137ndash52 Trebolle ldquoLa caidardquo 142 146ndash47


cessation seems to now be one of the main reasons why the Assyrian king in-vades Israelsup3⁹ It is possible that MT has here slightly smoothed the logic ofthe text (lectio facilior) by having Hoshea also withhold his annual tribute ontop of his conspiracy⁴⁰

Even more surprising is the OG plus following the second remark of Hoshearsquostribute despite the yearly tribute the king of Assyria ὕβρισε τὸν Ὠσῆ ldquoinsultedmaltreatedinjured Hosheardquo⁴sup1 as if Hoshea was simply a victim of the whims ofthe king of Assyria This reading becomes even more baffling if 4aα is deleted asa late addition there would be in the text no apparent reason why Hoshea andIsrael would have been invaded by Assyria and Hoshea ldquomaltreatedrdquo by theirking The situation could be compared to the similar enigmatic mention ofking Josiah dying at the hands of Pharaoh Necho in 2Kgs 2329 Such a textform would suit the minimalistic annalistic style of Kings⁴sup2 but would under-standably seem strange to a later reviser It seems thus likely that OG has pre-served a more original version of verse 4 MT reflecting the final edition of thetext

The whole account of Hoshea asking for the help of Egypt against Assyriacould thus be simply a late literary construct borne from the common (theolog-ical) motive of futile dependence on Egypt and a base text that seemed strange

One could also read this as a demonstration of Hoshearsquos cunning even though he sent mes-sengers to Egypt he did not stop with the tribute so that his conspiracy would not becomeknown Similarly Pablo Torijano ldquoTextual Criticism and the Text-Critical Edition of IV RegnorumThe Case of 172ndash6rdquo in After Qumran Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts the HistoricalBooks ed Hans Ausloos Beacuteneacutedicte Lemmelijn and Julio Trebolle (Leuven Peeters 2012)195ndash211 esp 205ndash207 Similar although apparently independent (a Vorlage different from[proto‐]MT) smoothing tendencies can be seen also in the kaige B-text It is also good tonote that the construct החנמ+הלע of MT is above all cultic (ldquoto offer burnt offeringsrdquo) not po-litical (usually translated in 2Kgs 174 as ldquoto pay tributerdquo) in its usage in the Hebrew Bible andtherefore somewhat unexpected here cf Ex 309 4029 Lev 1420 Judg 1319 Josh 2223 1Kgs1829 36 (gtLXX) 2Kgs 320 Isa 576 663 Jer 1412 Amos 522 It is hard to confirm the Vorlage of this reading since ὑβρίζω is a very rare verb in LXXcf 2Sam 1944 (lt ללק ) Isa 133 2312 Jer 3129 (lt ןואג ) Apart from ללק another plausible underly-ing verb could be רעצ as noted above If this was the case it would be possible that either theVorlage of ὕβρισε (lt והר)י(עציו ) or the MT reading ( והרצעיו ) has been borne out of a misreading ofa similar looking verbal form ndash maybe the MT form was thus borne out of an accidental harmo-nization towards the phonologically quite similar והרסאיו The text of OG without 4aα would read thusly ldquo3Against him rose Shalmaneser the king ofAssyrians and Hoshea became to him a servant and he bore him tribute 4aβ[Wiederaufnahmeand he was bearing him tribute] from year to year And the king of Assyrians insultedmaltreat-edinjured Hoshea and put him in prisonrdquo

222 Timo Tekoniemi

to a later reviser⁴sup3 It is therefore unlikely that there is much historical data to befound in the remark other than that there was according to OG an Ethiopiandynasty reigning in Egypt at the time and that this dynasty was at least atsome point thought to have been mighty enough to have had diplomatic rela-tions with Israel⁴⁴ The mention of ldquoSocirc the king of Egyptrdquo seems then like aneven later literarily-motivated harmonization

4 A Vestment of a Yahwistic High Priestin Samaria

In verse 1717 there is a curious plus in L and La115 in addition to Israelites prac-ticing divinations they also ldquomade an ephod and teraphimrdquo

It is quite clear that this plus is not a result of some textual mishap at least atypographical oneWe are most probably dealing with a literary variant betweenMT and very likely OG⁴⁵ When noted by commentators the most common ex-planation for this plus is that this mention was a gloss-like addition made inLXX either at the level of OG or some later copying stage⁴⁶ The additionwould have been made for the purpose of adding even more sins to the alreadylengthy listing of Israelrsquos misdeeds⁴⁷ The addition would have not been made

See similarly Christoph Levin in his chapter in this volume who argues quite convincinglythat verse 4 was likely not part of the most original version of the text Here the text-critical con-siderations thus can indeed help further corroborate even purely literary critical theories Maybe even this could have been later deduced by a glossator possibly from 2Kgs 199whereldquoTirhakah the king of Ethiopiardquo is mentioned Already Alfred Rahlfs Lucians Rezension der Koumlnigsbuumlcher Septuaginta-Studien 2 (Goumlttin-gen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1965) 290 classified this plus as ldquoVorlucianisches Gut in LrdquoThe plus is easily translatable back into Hebrew םיפרתודפאושעיו According to Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings A New Translation with Introduc-tion and Commentary (New York Doubleday 1988) 205ndash206 this plus is indeed due to ldquothe ten-dency of translators and copyists to add elements in catalogue-like listingsrdquo (although it is ex-ceedingly unlikely that this plus is due to the Septuagint translator) See also Stade Kings 264who notes ldquohellip originally a marginal gloss It seemed to a later reader as though this could not bedispensed with in the catalogue of Israelrsquos heresiesrdquo It could even be that this addition was made as a partial harmonization to the phrase foundin 2Kgs 216 (ldquoκαὶ οἰωνίζετο καὶ ἐποίησεν θελητὴνrdquo) but in that case the harmonizer would havedone an extremely bad job at his attempt


haphazardly since both the ephod and teraphim are indeed at times used in div-inatory practices⁴⁸

Ephod is used for ldquoasking Yahwehrdquo in 1Sam 239ndash 12 (LXX lacks verse 12) 307ndash8 and is inExodus often mentioned in connection with the breast-plate where Urim and Thummim werepositioned (Ex 257 284 15 28 (gtLXX) 295 359 27 398 21) Teraphim are used for divinationin Ezek 2121 and possibly Zech 102 Teraphim are also mentioned together with ephod in Judg175 1814 17 18 20 Hos 34 (different in LXX)

224 Timo Tekoniemi

However some scholars have also seen this plus as a part of the original He-brew text⁴⁹ As Schenker notes it is actually not that clear whether ldquomakingephod and teraphimrdquo is even a sin in itself⁵⁰ at least ephod which is eventwice consulted by David himself was quite clearly considered a part of the le-gitimate cult and is nowhere denounced as such⁵sup1 The teraphim on the otherhand are more often seen as a form of idolatry⁵sup2 Therefore we are in a toughspot on one hand it would be quite understandable to have the sinful Israelitesalso ldquomake teraphimrdquo as they clearly at least at some point came to be seen asidolatrous devices On the other hand making an ephod does not seem like agood sin (or sin at all) to add to the list On the other hand why would teraphimhave been taken off the text if they worked so well in the context Were they in-deed simply added in OG or its Hebrew Vorlage as a gloss of sorts possibly toincrease the sinfulness of the Israelites

The key to the problem may indeed lie in the ephod While still somewhatenigmatic it is quite clear that this usually quite lavishly adorned vestmentwas worn by priests and therefore it was indeed part of the legitimate Yahwisticcult Most importantly even though an ephod of some kind ( דבדופא ldquolinen

August Klostermann Die Buumlcher Samuelis und der Koumlnige (Noumlrdlingen Beck 1887) 454Adrian Schenker Une Bible Archeacutetype Les parallegravelles de Samuel-Rois et des Chroniques ed Mi-chaeumll Langlois (Paris Les Eacuteditions du Cerf 2013) 162ndash64 Schenker Une Bible 162ndash63 ldquoOn aurait donc deux fois en 2 Rois 1717 et 2 Rois 234 eacutelimineacutela mention de lrsquoephod drsquoun contexte paiumlen creacuteeacute par la deacutecadence religieuse du roi Manasseacuterdquo(163) Schenkerrsquos argument seems to be more about the text of Lucifer of Cagliari in 2Kgs 234than it is about 1717 and his argumentation does not really carry over from 234 to 1717 asthe contexts of these passages are so different (destruction of Samaria ndash reform of Josiah)That ephod was possibly omitted from the text in 234 does not in any way mean that itwould be omitted here as well especially when the ldquoreligious decadencerdquo of Manasseh towhich Schenker seems to give the blame in 1717 as well could not even have affected the Israel-ites yet See also Tuukka Kauhanen The Text of Kings and Lucifer of Cagliari (Atlanta GA SBLPress 2017) 293 who contends that the addition of ephod in 2Kgs 234 may be simply due toLuciferrsquos own modification of the text There are nevertheless some texts that seem to criticize ephod in the Hebrew Bible In Judg827 Gideon makes an ephod in Ophrah ldquoand all Israel played the harlot with it there so that itbecame a snare to Gideon and his householdrdquo Another story where ephod is criticized is thesatirical story about Micah and his own temple() in Judg 17ndash 18 However the biggest problemabout an ephod in these stories seems not to be its inherent unholiness (on the contrary theephod seems quite holy in both stories) but the fact that a wrong person has made an ephodand even more so to the wrong place (the Danites even take Micahrsquos ephod with them toDan) This way the case of 2Kgs 1717 may be in a way parallel to the idea expressed in thesestories as well wrong people have made an ephod to a wrong place (in north) See 1Sam 1523 2Kgs 2324 Zeph 102


ephodrdquo) is said to have been worn also by young Samuel and David⁵sup3 it seemsthat ephod was understood to have been especially a garment of the highpriest⁵⁴ This understanding of the word would in turn create an implicationaltheological tension in the OG text was there an ephod of a Yahwistic high priestin IsraelSamaria⁵⁵ This in turn would imply that there was also a legitimatesanctuary of Yahweh in Samaria This would have been something the later re-visers of the Second Temple period saw as highly inappropriate⁵⁶ Indeed in2Kgs 1724ndash41 the chapter becomes increasingly ldquoanti-Samaritanrdquo in its polemicTherefore it would not seem too strange if the mention of an ephod in context ofSamaria would be omitted even if it meant taking off the mention about the ter-aphim in connection to it

Since verse 17 is situated in the ldquohomileticalrdquo portion of the chapter(177ndash41) which very likely comes from later redactors than the ldquoannalisticrdquo vers-es 1ndash6 this implicit notion of a Yahwistic high priesthood in Samaria can hardlybe directly taken as describing a historical situation However a later omission ofsuch a remark would seem much more suspicious and possibly even more tell-ing of a historically extremely likely Yahwistic sanctuary in Samaria As noted byJuha Pakkala and Adrian Schenker it seems likely that the Masoretic edition ofSamuel-Kings is especially interested in omitting improper references to the ille-gitimate temple(s) of Yahweh and even Baal in Israel and Judah⁵⁷ It would thusbe expected that these Masoretic revisers were just as sensitive to possible ille-gitimate priestly garments in the Northern Kingdom as well

5 Conclusions

The notion that there was excessive rewriting in chapter 2Kgs 17 as is assumedby most literary critics is corroborated by the textual evidence there seem to betwo extant editions of chapter 17 preserved to us in textual witnesses ie MT and

In 1Sam 218 2Sam 614 This was the understanding of the rabbinic writers as well see Yehoshua M GrintzldquoEphodrdquo in EncJud 6 (Jerusalem Keter Publishing House 1972) 804ndash806 Carol MeyersldquoEphodrdquo in Anchor Bible Dictionary 2 (New York Doubleday 1992) 550 Both Judg 827 (Ophrah) and 17ndash 18 (Dan) also have the ldquowrong ephodrdquo in the area of thelater Northern kingdom These may both well be allusions to an illegitimate (high) priesthoodin SamariaNorthern kingdom similar to the case at hand Juha Pakkala Godrsquos Word Omitted Omissions in the Transmission of the Hebrew Bible (Goumlt-tingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2013) 233ndash34 Pakkala Godrsquos Word Omitted 213ndash22 231ndash37 243ndash45 Schenker Aumllteste Textgeschichte34ndash51 149ndash66 177ndash78

226 Timo Tekoniemi

LXX It is clear that even complete rewriting of some verses has happened in ei-ther the MT or the OG editions of the chapter Some details of the text changebetween the editions whether it be the evil of Hoshea in 2Kgs 172 or thename of the Egyptian ruler in verse 174 There likely even were several omissionsin the textual transmission of MT most notably in verse 2Kgs 1717 where theephod of a Yahwistic high priest is mentioned in OG edition

All of these textual remarks also have further repercussions to the use of thischapter as a witness to further scholarly assessments if the text was indeed re-written as extensively as seems to be the case how much of the text ndash and ofwhich edition ndash can be used for historical reconstructions for example Ifthere is indeed a considerable possibility that the Old Greek has at times pre-served a text form earlier than that of MT it is methodologically questionableto discard such readings from the get-go without first conducting a meticulousstudy of their origins

The extremely complicated literary-critical and redactional situation ofchapter 17 and the Book of Kings as a whole may also be further complicatedby the text-critical evidence since the different editions may occasionally haveeven completely differing texts in redactionally important passages In thecase of verse 172 it is indeed interesting to note that even a passage oftenthought to come from the earliest redactional stages may have been completelyrewritten in the transmission process and has now been transformed into a com-plete opposite of the original version in the latest form of the text attainable to us(either MT or OG)

A critical study of textual variants in 2Kgs 17 is thus not merely a matter oftheoretical discussion of unimportant details but likely of two widely variant ed-itions whose differences likely go back to a coherent revision on the part of oneor the other ndash or even both Because of this the text-critical importance of theSeptuagint should be taken most seriously both in this chapter and in Sa-muel-Kings as a whole


Danrsquoel Kahn

The Fall of Samaria an Analysis of theBiblical Sources

1 Introduction the Fall of Samaria in 2Kgs

The end of the Kingdom of Israel is described in Assyrian sources as well as bib-lical sources (2Kgs 173ndash6 and a similar description of the event in 2Kgs 189ndash 11synchronising the event with the reign of Hezekiah king of Judah) The historicalcircumstances leading to the fall of the kingdom are described in a highly con-densed paragraph Several Assyrian campaigns against Israel are alluded to aswell as its subjugation rebellion siege final capitulation and imprisonment ofits last king Hoshea However the Biblical account raises many questions aboutthe order of events Furthermore there is an apparent discrepancy between theidentity of the Assyrian conqueror in the Assyrian sources that claim that Sar-gon II of Assyria subdued Samaria and the Biblical accounts that claim that itwas Shalmaneser V of Assyria

In reconstructing the events several scholars (eg Bob Becking MordechaiCogan and Hayim Tadmor Nadav Narsquoaman Gershon Galil etc) suggested thatthe apparent chronological conundrums in 2Kgs 173ndash6 were caused by eitherthe merging of two or more sources ndash an Israelite chronicle and a Judean onean early chronicle and a late source or a redactional addition of a late editor

In this chapter I propose a literary reading of the Biblical text which maysolve these problems It is my contention that 2Kgs 173ndash6 is a coherent sourceWhen paying attention to the pronouns of each verse it becomes clear that theparagraph about the fall of Samaria (2Kgs 173ndash6) is organised according tothe following topics and not necessarily in chronological order the deeds andthe fate of the king of Israel the fate of the kingdom and city the fate of the in-habitants of Samaria In contrast 2Kgs 189ndash 11 is a composite literary text Thesynchronisms between Hezekiah king of Judah and Hoshea son of Elah king ofIsrael are the work of a redactor who inserted them into the narrative of Heze-kiah in order to contrast between the fate of the most pious king of Judah and thefate of his kingdom and the fate of Hoshea and the end of the kingdom of Israel

I dedicate this chapter to the memory of my beloved son Gilead Kahn zldquol who passed away on1 March 2018

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-011

2 Previous Analyses of 2Kgs 173ndash6 andProposed Solutions

2Kgs 173ndash6 narrates the fall of Samaria from a historical perspective It is fol-lowed by a theological explanation for the downfall of the Northern KingdomAn additional historical version appears in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 These two texts ashas been noted long ago closely resemble each other but are not entirely par-allel Vv 3ndash4 in 2Kgs 17 are missing in 2Kgs 18 while 2Kgs 175ndash6 resemble2Kgs 189ndash 11

I will first summarise the views of previous scholars Two main attitudes canbe detected in analysing 2Kgs 17 3ndash6 The first attitude is to consider 2Kgs 173ndash4and 5ndash6 (with its parallel in 189ndash 11) as two parallel accounts of the same eventfrom two different archival sources whether Israelite Judean or Assyrian Thesecond attitude is to see these verses as consecutive events from a single coher-ent source with possible additions of the Deuteronomistic Historian who wroteduring the exile at the earliest

After reviewing these suggestions and their merits and flaws I will forwardmy understanding of the composition of 2Kgs 173ndash6 and 2Kgs 189ndash 11 I willclaim that 2Kgs 173ndash6 is a single literary source and that the synchronisms be-tween Hezekiah and the last days of Samaria as maintained in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 arethe work of a redactor and are not original Therefore they cannot be used inreconstructing the historical events that led to the fall of Samaria

21 Two Parallel Accounts of the Same Event fromTwo Different Archives

In 1892 Hugo Wincklersup1 noted discrepancies in the narrative of 2Kgs 173ndash6 be-tween the imprisonment of Hoshea in v 4b and the beginning of the siege inv 5 He could not imagine that Samaria would endure a three-year siege withouthaving a king and without nominating a new one Furthermore the redactor un-derstood that the reign of Hoshea ended with the fall of Samaria in his ninth reg-nal year and not at the beginning of the siegeWinckler was probably the first to

Hugo Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1892) 16ndash25 (ldquoBeitraumlgezur quellenscheidung der Koumlnigsbuumlcherrdquo)

230 Danrsquoel Kahn

suggest that 2Kgs 173ndash6 was composed of two units from different sourcessup2 Ac-cording to him 2Kgs 173ndash4 originated from one source and described the sub-jugation and later imprisonment of Hoshea whereas vv 5ndash6 and its parallel2Kgs 189ndash11 stem from a different source and describe the fall of Samariaand the exile of its population Winckler raised the question that if 2Kgs173ndash6 were constituted from one source how could 2Kgs 189ndash 11 its parallelfail to mention the imprisonment of Hoshea He could not imagine that this de-tail was omitted because the parallel pericope dealt with the history of JudahThus he concluded that this was proof that 2Kgs 173ndash6 was composed fromtwo different sources He did not explicitly state their origin but it is clearfrom his discussion that in his view vv 3ndash4 stemmed from an Israelite sourcethat followed upon 2Kgs 1530 describing the conspiracy of Hoshea who slewPekah and rose to the thronesup3

Immanuel Benzinger suggested that vv 3ndash4 stem from the Israelite annalsaccepting Wincklerrsquos division into two sources Vv 5ndash6 were regarded as deriv-ing from Judean annals attached by a later redactor who used 2Kgs 189ndash 12 ashis source⁴ Albert Šanda speculated that vv 3ndash4 may derive from Hoshearsquos an-nals whereas vv 5ndash6 may derive from a later compiler⁵ The ldquotwo sources hy-pothesisrdquo was also adopted by many scholars ie Rudolf Kittel⁶ Charles F Bur-ney⁷ Bernhard Stade and Friedrich Schwally⁸ Martin Noth⁹ John Graysup1⁰ RichardD Nelsonsup1sup1 Julio Trebollesup1sup2 Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmorsup1sup3 and Bob

Eg Otto Thenius Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Leipzig Hirzel 1873) 379ndash82 does not offer thisexplanation and Frederic William Farrar The Second Book of Kings (New York Armstrong1894) 235ndash43 does not mention the possible existence of two sources either Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen 16ndash25 Immanuel Benzinger Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Freiburg Universitaumltsverlag 1899) 172ndash73 Albert Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Muumlnster Aschendorf 1911) 217 Rudolf Kittel Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1900) 274 Charles F Burney Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Kings (Oxford Clarendon 1903)328ndash30 Bernhard Stade and Friedrich Schwally The Books of Kings (Leipzig Hinrichs 1904) 48 Martin Noth Uumlberlieferungsgeschichtliche Studie die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Ge-schichtswerke im Alten Testament (Darmstadt Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1963) 78 John Gray I amp II Kings a Commentary (Philadelphia Westminster Press 1975) 645ndash50 Richard D Nelson Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (Sheffield JSOT Press1981) 61ndash62 Julio Trebolle Barrera ldquoLa caiacuteda de Samariacutea criacutetica textual literaria e histoacuterica de 2 Re 173ndash6rdquo Salmanticensis 28 (1981) 137ndash52 Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings (New York Doubleday 1988) 196


Becking sup1⁴ It thus became a wide consensus to regard these verses as stemmingfrom two different sources an Israelite and a Judean source

The detailed information about Hoshearsquos conspiracy his alliance with Egyptand his rebellion against Assyria is found in vv 3ndash4 which shows knowledgeof Israelite politics between the superpowers Assigning these verses to an Isra-elite archival source is therefore certainly possible On the other hand vv 5ndash6which the majority of scholars regard as Judean is understood by ShemaryahuTalmon as a factual Israelite annalistic notation devoid of any derogatory con-notations against the fate of the Kingdom of Israelsup1⁵ It would seem that there isno clear criteria to distinguish between the origins of the alleged sources Fur-thermore Nadav Narsquoaman has rightly stressed sup1⁶ that there is no stylistic or lin-guistic difference between the two assumed sources The passage is written inthe same verbal patterns as many other passages in the Book of Kings includingother episodes that refer to campaigns by Assyrian kings against Israel or JudahIt opens in the past qatal form followed by verbs with the waw consecutive way-yiqtol form Hence there are no established criteria to identify either of theseverses as originating from an Israelite or Judean source and the linguistic divi-sion seems artificial

22 Brettlerrsquos View the Use of an Assyrian Sourceand Possible Later Editorial Work

The division of vv 3ndash6 into two sources has been slightly revised by Marc ZBrettlersup1⁷ Vv 5ndash6 are regarded as based on an early source Brettler speculatesthat they derive from an Assyrian text based on the progression of the verbswhich follows that of the Assyrian annals (the king going up against a countrybesieging and capturing it [alme akšud ašlula] exiling the inhabitants and set-tling them in foreign cities) and because of the list of cities in v 6 to which theconquered people were exiled Furthermore Brettler claims that v 6 originallyopened with ldquohe capturedrdquo ( דוכליו ) with a waw consecutive followed by the con-

Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria an Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill1992) 47ndash53 Shemaryahu Talmon ldquoPolemics and Apology in Biblical Historiography 2 Kings 1724ndash41rdquoin Shemaryahu Talmon Literary Studies in the Hebrew Bible Form and Content Collected Studies(Leiden Brill 1993) 141 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samariardquo Bib 71 (1990) 213 Marc Z Brettler ldquoText in a Tell 2 Kings 17 as Historyrdquo in Marc Z Brettler The Creation ofHistory in Ancient Israel (LondonNew York Routledge 1995) 112ndash 18

232 Danrsquoel Kahn

verted imperfect wayyiqtol and not with the date ldquoIn the ninth year of Hoshea theking of Assyria captured Samaria ( ןורמש־תארושא־ךלמדכלעשוהלתיעשתהתנשב )rdquo forthe following reasons

1 The grammatical past form ldquohe capturedrdquo ( דכל ) breaks the narrative sequence2 ldquoIn the ninth yearrdquo ( תיעשתהתנשב ) is a late addition since the syntax of that verse is only

found in texts which date to exile and later Furthermore if the source was Assyrian thetext would not date according to the regnal years of Hoshea Therefore the text musthave been added later

Therefore v 6aα is regarded as an addition based on the regnal years of Hosheamentioned in v 1 Brettler mentions the double introduction of the king of Assy-ria ldquohe went up againstrdquo ( הלע )sup1⁸ In addition the text in vv 4ndash5 suggests that theNorthern Kingdom withstood a three-year siege after its king was exiled this isalso regarded by Brettler as unlikely The similarities between the phrases thatopen v 3 and v 5 suggest to Brettler that this is a case of WiederaufnahmeThe reconstruction of v 4 and v 5 coming from different sources resolves inBrettlerrsquos opinion the problem of Samaria enduring a three-year siege withouta king The repeated notices in v 3a and v 5a are the result of redactional activityTherefore a later editor found or created an additional fragment which offeredbackground information concerning the political history of events that led upto the conquest of Samaria This information chronologically preceded the captureand exile of Samaria and was inserted as an introduction to vv 5ndash6 He markedthe insertion with a Wiederaufnahme The insertion names Shalmaneser incor-rectly accepting Narsquoamanrsquos suggestion that Samaria was conquered only onceby Sargon [italics mine]

In order to prove that vv 3ndash4 were an addition of a later editor Brettlernotes that the opening of the verse 3 רושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעוילע does notoccur in the Deuteronomistic History and is only found in 2Chr 366 הלעוילע

הלבבוכילהלםיתשחנבוהרסאיולבבךלמרצאנדכובנ (ldquoAgainst him King Nebuchadnez-zar of Babylon came up and bound him with fetters to take him to Babylonrdquo)

Brettler therefore regards this form as an exilic or post-exilic form added tothe original text Furthermore he deems the claim that Samaria was besieged forthree years unhistorical since the treatment of the city after its conquest follow-ing a three-year rebellion seems too mild He regards it as an accidental mistakeby a Judean scribe or copyist [italics mine] who turned the fact that Samaria wasconquered in Sargonrsquos third year into a three-year siege (however it actually oc-curred in his second regnal year) According to Brettler the origins of vv 3ndash4 are

The king of Assyria is actually mentioned five times in these verses


less clear The elements of paying tribute conspiring ceasing to pay tribute andbeing fettered are found in Assyrian royal inscriptions and it is possible thatthey were based on Assyrian inscriptions as well In most inscriptions the rebel-lious king is exiled to Assyria rather than imprisoned Furthermore there is nospecific material that requires access to Assyrian sources The only concrete in-formation in vv 3ndash4 namely the names of Shalmaneser and Soʾ king of Egyptare regarded by Brettler as highly suspect and understood as two historical er-rors by the late editor Brettler therefore concludes that vv 3ndash4 were createdto offer background information concerning the exile and may not be from anold source at all but created by an editor structured to conform to the biblicalpattern of being reliant on Egypt and being sent in fetters to Mesopotamia (cfhowever the fate of Manasseh [2Chr 3311] Jehoiachin [2Kgs 2412 no fetters men-tioned] Jehoiakim [2Chr 366] and Zedekiah [2Kgs 257])

Bustenay Oded accepting Brettlerrsquos suggestion of an Assyrian source addsthat the imprisonment of Hoshea before the fall of Samaria was probably basedon an Assyrian source in which Shalmaneser might have boasted that he im-prisoned Hoshea in his own town (ina ālīšu esiršu) According to Oded Hoshearsquosfate was not elaborated upon as in the case of other kings who were exiled andHoshearsquos imprisonment may have been superimposed upon Jehoiachinrsquos fate Asecond reason why Hoshearsquos fate was allegedly paralleled with Jehoiachinrsquos isaccording to Oded the fact that Hoshea was not considered in v 2 as bad ashis predecessors and therefore he was saved from death and imprisoned priorto the siegesup1⁹

23 Doubts Concerning Brettlerrsquos and Odedrsquos Views

However Brettlerrsquos and Odedrsquos arguments can be refuted on grammatical syn-tactical methodological and historical grounds

Whereas Brettler claimed that the description of the king going up againsta country besieging and capturing itsup2⁰ exiling the inhabitants and settlingthem in foreign cities derive from Assyrian royal inscriptions based on the pro-gression of the verbs it should be remembered that the Assyrian actions werestandard tactics and because of their standard occurrence in warfare becamestock phrases In the biblical verses these verbs appear but not only in 2Kgs

Bustanay Oded ldquoIssues in the Bible in Light of the Assyrian Inscriptionsrdquo Beit Mikra Jour-nal for the Study of the Bible and Its World 42 (1996) 4ndash6 (in Hebrew) alme ldquoI besiegedrdquo akšud ldquoI conqueredrdquo ašlula ldquoI carried off their spoils (including people)rdquo

234 Danrsquoel Kahn

17 According to this logic 2Kgs 1813 describing the arrival of the Assyrian armyin 701 BCE besieging and conquering all the cities of Judah should be consid-ered to derive from an Assyrian royal inscription as well But is this evidence ofcopying an Assyrian text or a reflection of reality Note that the harsher termsappul (ldquoI destroyedrdquo) aqqur (ldquoI devastatedrdquo) and aqmucirc (ldquoI set on firerdquo) are notused This seems to correspond with the archaeological findings at Samariasup2sup1

The elements of paying tribute conspiring ceasing to pay tribute and beingfettered are found in Assyrian royal inscriptions However since these elementswere widely practiced in the ancient Near East and Egyptsup2sup2 they do not have tobe regarded as originating from Assyrian texts

As Brettler noted the list of destinations of the deportees resembles thehabit of Assyrian royal inscriptions to specify deportations of exiles and their re-settling in remote parts of the empire However the Assyrian kings who deport-ed the Israelites did not specify the destination of the deportations According tomost royal inscriptions exiles were deported to Assyria or in broad terms to theeast or to the westsup2sup3 Only in very rare cases is the destination of the exiles speci-fied and the names of towns mentionedsup2⁴ In none of these cases do the Assyrianroyal inscription specify the breaking down of the settlement of deportees intospecific towns inside a region or their dispersal into several regions as is thecase of 2Kgs 176 Furthermore the list resembles the list in 2Kgs 1834 Doesthis mean that both should be regarded as based on an (unknown) Assyrian

Ron E Tappy ldquoThe Final Years of Israelite Samaria Toward a Dialogue between Texts andArchaeologyrdquo in Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeology and History of the EasternMediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin ed Sidnie White Crawford and Amnon Ben-Tor (Jeru-salem W F Albright Institute of Archaeological Research Israel Exploration Society 2007)265 275ndash76 Cf the terminology in Nazek Khalid Matty Sennacheribrsquos Campaign againstJudah and Jerusalem in 701 BC a Historical Reconstruction (Berlin de Gruyter 2016) 41ndash46 Cf the terms used in Egyptian texts Anthony John Spalinger Aspects of the Military Docu-ments of the Ancient Egyptians (New Haven Yale University Press 1982) Cf Bustenay Oded Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesba-den Harrassowitz 1979) and Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume Tiglath-pileser III Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pi-leser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Ei-senbrauns 2011) no 14 8 Sargon II Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad(Goumlttingen Cuvillier Verlag 1994) 290 Zyl 19ndash20 313ndash 14 Ann 16ndash 17 315 Ann 66ndash67 320Ann 120ndash23 324 Ann 211ndash13 324 Ann 213ndash 15 335 Ann 380ndash81 346 Prunk 49 55ndash56 57349 Prunk 115ndash16 351ndash52 Prunk 138ndash39 Sennacherib A Kirk Grayson and Jamie NovotnyThe Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib King of Assyria (704ndash681 BC) Part 1 (Winona Lake IN Ei-senbrauns 2012) no 2 24 no 3 24 no 4 22 no 16 ii 24 no 17 ii 42 no 18 ii 19rsquo


royal inscriptionsup2⁵ of either Shalmaneser V or Sargon II that was somehow acces-sible to the Hebrew scribe

As to Odedrsquos claim that the imprisonment of Hoshea ( והרסאיו ) before the fallof Samaria was based on an Assyrian source in which Shalmaneser might haveboasted that he imprisoned Hoshea in his own town (ina āliīšu esiršu)sup2⁶ this con-tradicts the biblical text Hoshea is arrested and set in prison ( אלכתיב ) not keptin confinement in his town ‟like a bird in a cagerdquo This description is used to de-note the attempts to subdue leaders who were not caught by the Assyrian kingIn the cases of confining the rulers of Damascus to their city in the days of Adad-nerari III Shalmaneser III and Tiglath-pileser III and of Sennacheribrsquos campaignagainst Judah there is no evidence of a prolonged siegeWhen the besieged cit-ies finally surrendered in the cases of Adad-nerari III Tiglath-pileser III and Sen-nacherib the inscriptions do not describe the blockades and deportations of therespective kings in connection with their cityrsquos capturesup2⁷ Odedrsquos reconstructionof events is based on the assumption that Hoshearsquos imprisonment preceded thefall of the city Oded then compares Hoshearsquos fate to that of Jehoiachin who waskept alivesup2⁸ However we simply do not know anything of Hoshearsquos fate after hisimprisonment and it would be wrong to speculate about his fate based on anenigmatic evaluation of his reign in v 2 which does not belong to the narrativeof the fall of Samaria but to the Deuteronomistic framework

The issue of transferring motifs from Assyrian royal inscriptions to the Bib-lical sphere has been en vogue since Peter Machinistrsquos seminal work on the sub-ject in the Book of Isaiah and has found many adherentssup2⁹ However the meth-ods by which these motifs would have been transferred have been questionedand the issue should be approached with caution as the studies of William Mor-row showsup3⁰ There is the possibility that the information about the fall of Samaria

Cf Ehud Ben Zvi ldquoWho Wrote the Speech of Rabshakeh and Whenrdquo JBL 109 (1990)88ndash91 Etymologically and semantically Hebrew רסא and Akkadian esēru are similar Davide Nadali ldquoSieges and Similes of Sieges in the Royal Annals the Conquest of Damas-cus by Tiglath-pileser IIIrdquo Kaskal 6 (2009) 137ndash49 Oded ldquoIssues in the Biblerdquo 4ndash6 Peter Machinist ldquoAssyria and Its Image in the First Isaiahrdquo JAOS 103 (1983) 719ndash37 Adherentsinclude eg Nili Wazana and Shawn Zelig Aster to name just a few Cf Shawn Zelig Aster ldquoTrans-mission of Neo-Assyrian Claims of Empire to Judah in the Late Eighth Century BCErdquo HUCA 78(2007) 1ndash44 Cf William S Morrow ldquoCuneiform Literacy and Deuteronomic Compositionrdquo BO 62 (2005)204ndash 13William S Morrow ldquoTribute from Judah and the Transmission of Assyrian Propagandardquoin ldquoMy Spirit at Rest in the North Countryrdquo (Zechariah 68) Collected Communications to the XXth

236 Danrsquoel Kahn

originates from an Assyrian inscription but this hypothesis was neither success-fully demonstrated by Brettler nor by Oded Concrete evidence is still lacking

As to Brettlerrsquos attempt to prove the existence of a later redactor the claimthat the syntax in v 6 תיעשתהתנשב ldquoin the ninth yearrdquo is late Biblical Hebrewsup3sup1is incorrect In contrast to Brettlerrsquos assertion the clause ldquoin the nth year of helliprdquooccurs already in the Samaria ostraca (without the n which is assimilated intothe t)sup3sup2 These clauses should therefore not be regarded as later additions Bret-tlerrsquos motivation in discarding the originality of this opening to v 6 is that if thesource had been Assyrian as Brettler suggested the text would not be dated ac-cording to the regnal years of Hosheasup3sup3 Indeed this circular reasoning is prob-lematic Furthermore Brettlerrsquos claim that the grammatical past form דכל (ldquocap-turedrdquo) in v 6 breaks the narrative sequence and is not in the convertedimperfect and that this is therefore another piece of evidence that the date isa late addition and the verb was changedsup3⁴ is not precise The verbal formopens the sequence of verbs following a time adverb just as v 3 opens withan indirect object followed by a verb in the qatal form and is followed by way-yiqtol forms

Brettler assumes that vv 3ndash4 are late editorial additions Brettlerrsquos claim thatthe opening of the verse 3 רושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעוילע does not occur in the Deu-teronomistic History is correct However he uses the occurrence of this wordorder in 2Chr 366 clearly a post-exilic text to claim that the same syntacticstructure in v 3 is a late form as well that is to say a late addition by a post-ex-ilic redactorsup3⁵ Unfortunately the occurrence of the same syntax in the post-exilicBook of Chronicles misled Brettler who took it as a sign of the lateness of thetext In both cases the sentence emphasises its adverbial complement The infor-mation focuses on the fate of the attacked king It is against him (Hoshea andJehoiakim) that the foreign king campaigned The emphasis is on the identityof the attacked king against some other option (Jehoiachin) and not on thefate of the capital city or kingdom

Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament ed Hermann Mi-chael Niemann and Matthias Augustin (Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang 2011) 183ndash92 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 117 Shmuel Ahituv and Anson F Rainey Echoes from the Past Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptionsfrom the Biblical Period (Jerusalem Carta 2008) 263 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 117 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 117 and n 38 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 115


Brettler suggests that in v 5 there is a Wiederaufnahme of v 3 where Shalma-neser king of Assyria ldquowent up againstrdquosup3⁶ However the object of the sentence isdifferent and the narrative does not resume where it digressed from its courseThus the similarity of verbs should not be seen as resumptive

Brettler dismisses the data mentioning Shalmaneser as the conqueror of Sa-maria and regards the length of the siege as unhistoricalsup3⁷ Whereas the Baby-lonian Chronicle explicitly mentions that Shalmaneser destroyed Samariasup3⁸ athree-year long siege is not incomprehensible and was rejected only becauseof Brettlerrsquos preconceptions

Finally Brettler claims that v 3 is added to conform to the biblical patternof being reliant on Egyptsup3⁹ However where can this pattern be detected exceptfor Isaiah and Jeremiah which are historical Why should the information aboutconspiring with the king of Egypt be regarded as fictitious At the end of the 8th

century BCE there is evidence of Egyptian intervention in the Levant as can belearned from Assyrian biblical and classical texts⁴⁰ and as a seal of Hosheawith Egyptian motifs testifies⁴sup1

24 The Composition of 2Kgs 189ndash 11

In a century of scholarship scholars from Hugo Winckler in 1892⁴sup2 to Bob Beck-ing in 1992⁴sup3 have based their arguments for the existence of a second sourcedescribing the Fall of Samaria on the existence of 2Kgs 189ndash 11 which partiallyparallels 2Kgs 175ndash6 and does not include 2Kgs 173ndash4 However in 1990 Chris-tof Hardmeier⁴⁴ proposed that two sources were assembled together in 2Kgs189ndash 11 on the following grounds

Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 116 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 118 Jean-Jacques Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature2004) 195 Brettler ldquoText in a Tellrdquo 118 Danrsquoel Kahn ldquoThe Inscription of Sargon II at Tang-i Var and the Chronology of Dynasty 25rdquoOr 70 (2001) 1ndash 18 Andreacute Lemaire ldquoRoyal Signature Name of Israelrsquos Last King Surfaces in a Private Collec-tionrdquo BAR 21 (1995) 48ndash52 Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen 16ndash25 Becking The Fall of Samaria 47ndash53 Christof Hardmeier Prophetie im Streit vor dem Untergang Judas Erzahlkommunikative Stud-ien zur Entstehungssituation der Jesaja- und Jeremiaerzahlungen in II Reg 18ndash20 und Jer 37ndash40(Berlin de Gruyter 1990) 101ndash 108

238 Danrsquoel Kahn

a Two forms of the name of Hezekiah king of Judah occur in these three vers-es In v 9 king Hezekiahu is spelled והיקזחךלמה whereas in v 10 his name isspelled היקזח This spelling occurs as well in v 1 (the Deuteronomistic open-ing of the framework of the chapter) and in the so-called source A in 2Kgs1814ndash 16 differing from the rest of the Sennacherib-Hezekiah narrative in2Kgs 1813ndash 1937

b The conquest of Samaria using the verb דכל occurs twice In v 10a the verboccurs in the direct object suffix conjugation and again in v 10b in the pas-sive voice

c Hoshea appears twice as king of Israel One use of the title is redundantd There is a double synchronism between the years of Hezekiah and Hosheae There are two different systems of counting years in v 9 and v 10 In v 9 the

year is in absolute state followed by the number in the ordinal with a def-inite article preceding it תיעיברההנשביהיו (ldquoIt happened in the fourth year ofking Hezekiahrdquo) In v 10 the year is in the construct state and the number inthe cardinal without the article שש־תנשב (ldquoin year sixrdquo)

Hardmeier suggests that the first source can be found in vv 9ndash 10a and the sec-ond starts at v 10b According to him vv 9ndash 10a open a narrative that continueswith Sennacheribrsquos campaign against Judah in 1813 He assigns this source tothe DtrN (Nomist) who worked in the exilic or post-exilic period since he iden-tifies this narrative structure in the description of the fall of Judah and in thebooks of Jeremiah and Ezekiel⁴⁵

There are some weaknesses in Hardmeierrsquos hypothesis These can be dividedinto two aspects the reconstruction of two alleged sources and chronologicalaspects I will start with the question of two sources in 189ndash101 The reconstruction of two alleged sources

a If one eliminates the information of v 9 the Assyrian king in v 11 be-comes anonymous⁴⁶

b According to Hardmeierrsquos reconstruction the information of allegedsource 189ndash 10a derives from 2Kgs 173ndash5a whereas alleged source1810bndash11 derives from 2Kgs 175bndash6 The alleged redactor of both sour-ces in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 had either the two alleged sources of 173ndash4 and5ndash6 in front of him in which case he mixed the two sources and createdtwo new sources divided differently or he had in front of him the entire

Hardmeier Prophetie im Streit 108 Benjamin D Thomas Hezekiah and the Compositional History of the Book of Kings (TuumlbingenMohr Siebeck 2014) 350


paragraph 2Kgs 173ndash6 In that case it is difficult to understand why hediscarded a unified narrative in order to create two sources with numer-ous problems

2 Chronological aspectsa The information of 189ndash 10a is not fabricated at a late exilic date and

can be found in 175ndash6 and corroborated by the Babylonian Chroniclewhere it is explicitly claimed that Samaria was destroyed by Shalmanes-er V⁴⁷

b Hardmeier associates 189ndash 10a in which Hezekiahu is written with thelonger and older spelling to the post-exilic period whereas he regardedthe shorter writing as earlier The biblical data leads to the opposite con-clusion⁴⁸

c Hardmeierrsquos identification of a narrative opening in v 9 is correct how-ever dating it to the exilicpost-exilic period because of the occurrenceof similar syntactic structures in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel isunnecessary 2Kgs 1813Isa 361 which has a similar opening (the Sen-nacherib account) does not have to be regarded as post-exilic On thecontrary it seems to be based on early material

Consequently even though Hardmeierrsquos observations are valid and cannot beignored his division into two hypothetical sources of which at least one is exilicor even post-exilic stitched together in v 10b should be discarded The solutionis more complicated

There are several additional factors which have to be taken into accounta The chronology is Judean but the events described surprisingly deal with

Israelite historyb The pericope is detached from what precedes and from what follows⁴⁹c 189ndash 11 appear in chapter 17 with minor changes and are therefore redun-

dantd Hezekiah is named without title whereas Hoshea appears with full name

and titlee The subject changes from the king of Assyria in the singular in v 9 to an un-

mentioned plural in v 10a and then to Samaria in passive singular in v 10b

Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles 195 Sara Japhet ldquoThe Supposed Common Authorship of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemia Investi-gated Anewrdquo VT 18 (1968) 338ndash41 David Talshir ldquoA Reinvestigation of the Linguistic Relation-ship between Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiahrdquo VT 38 (1988) 175ndash76 Galo WVera Chamaza ldquoLiterarkritische Beobachtung zu 2 Koumln 18 1ndash 12rdquo BZ 33 (1989) 228

240 Danrsquoel Kahn

f It seems that v 9 originally ended in the middle of v 10 with ldquoand at the endof three years they took itrdquo

The synchronisms in 189ndash 10 are regarded as authentic original and historicalby many scholars⁵⁰ However when scrutinizing these verses I have come to theconclusion that these synchronisms cannot be relied upon to be historical for thefollowing reasonsg All the synchronisms in the Book of Kings between the kings of Israel and

Judah and vice versa have a similar syntactic form The ones who differfrom this form are suspected not to be authentic for various reasons

h All synchronisms in the Book of Kings are between the accession of a kingand the regnal years of the other king⁵sup1

i From the 35 synchronisms in the Book of Kings the only synchronisms toopen with the words שלשתנשביהיותיעיברההנשביהיו (ldquoand it happened inthe nth yearrdquo) are found in 2Kgs 181 and 9 respectively

j תנשביהיו usually opens royal narratives about wars or divine revelations tothe prophets Jeremiah Ezekiel and Zechariah⁵sup2 whereas synchronismsopen with the time clause תנשב without a narrative opening (except for2Kgs 181)

k There is no synchronism of events in the middle or end of a reign except inthis case

l The double synchronism of years four and six in a space of one verse is un-necessary and unique

m In v 9 the nominal clause opening with the feminine copula הנשהאיהלארשיךלמהלא־ןבעשוהלתיעיבשה (ldquowhich was the seventh year of king Hoshea

son of Elah of Israelrdquo) can be regarded as a gloss similar to the gloss inJer 251 which is omitted in the Septuagint⁵sup3 This gloss is inserted into v 9and creates the first synchronism

Becking The Fall of Samaria 47ndash53 For a list of the synchronisms see conveniently M Christine Tetley The Reconstructed Chro-nology of the Divided Kingdom (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2005) 35ndash39 and Hayim TadmorldquoChronologyrdquo Encyclopedia Miqraʾit 4 (1963) 251ndash54 (in Hebrew) 1Kgs 1425 2Kgs 127 2Kgs 251 Jer 251 281 321 361 9 524 Ezek 81 201 241 261 291 173020 311 321 17 3321 Zech 71 See the dating in Jer 321 2Kgs 258 and its parallel in Jer 5212 have a similar structure Theclause occurs in LXX 4 Kgdms 258 but is omitted in the Septuagint of ch 52 Note that theseparagraphs have a parallel in Jer 39 where this verse is entirely omitted The origin of these para-graphs is debated and exceeds the scope of this paper


n The clause ldquoIn the sixth year of Hezekiah which was the ninth year of kingHoshea of Israel Samaria was takenrdquo creates a strain in the sentence

From the analysis of the synchronisms in 2Kgs 189ndash 10 it becomes clear thatthey differ from the synchronisms in the Book of Kings in terms of syntax (v 9corresponds to the opening of narratives) and the use of synchronisms withevents of the middle of the reign and not with the accession At least one syn-chronism (year 6 of Hezekiah is year 9 of Hoshea) belongs orthographically tothe dating used in the Deuteronomistic strata⁵⁴

Year 9 is the year found in the original description of the fall of Samaria(2Kgs 176) and is then coupled to Hezekiahrsquos reign There is a duplication ofdata which does not add any new and significant information

As Hardmeier noticed v 9 opens with a narrative opening יהיו followed by thedate of an event dating ldquoin the fourth year of King Hezekiahurdquo ( תיעיברההנשביהיו

והיקזחךלמל )⁵⁵ The narrative opening remains but the original continuation ofthat narrative is dislocated The redactor was not interested in the events ofHezekiahrsquos fourth regnal year but wanted to contrast the fall of Samaria withthe reign of Hezekiah He mentioned Shalmaneser as the king of Assyria whocame against Samaria in 189 This information is taken from 2Kgs 173 Sincethe name of Shalmaneser has been taken from 173 where he is said to havecome up against Hoshea the omission of the latterrsquos fate from 2Kgs 18 shouldbe understood as deliberate The redactor was simply not interested in the fateof the king of Israel As a consequence the grammar of the sentence waschanged and the emphasizing structure הלעוילע was discarded However theqatal verbal form הלע of 2Kgs 173 remained unchanged Thus it can be conclud-ed that 2Kgs 189 is dependent on information from 2Kgs 173 which is regardedby scholars as a separate independent source allegedly not available to the au-thor of 2Kgs 189ndash11

The next information in the redactorrsquos source was the date found in 2Kgs175bndash6 for Samariarsquos fall in Hoshearsquos ninth regnal year after a three-yearsiege In order to connect the passages about the fall of Samaria with the dateof the fourth regnal year of Hezekiah (which was available to him) the redactorcalculated backwards three years from Hoshearsquos ninth regnal year He arrivedat year 7 of Hoshea and added it in a gloss in the corresponding grammaticalconstruction of a narrative synchronising it with the date he had for Hezekiah

לארשיךלמהלא־ןבעשוהלתיעיבשההנשהאיה He then added the information about

See the writing of the name Hezekiah היקזח in 2Kgs 181 Hardmeier Prophetie im Streit 107

242 Danrsquoel Kahn

the Fall of Samaria in year 9 of Hoshea as found in his source (2Kgs 17) By cor-relating the dates concerning the Fall of Samaria with the source about Heze-kiah he added to Hezekiahrsquos fourth regnal year the three years of siege and ar-rived at Hezekiahrsquos regnal year 6 He then synchronised it in the correspondinggrammatical construction of an official date

I concur with Hardmeier that the paragraph originally opened a narrativeHowever I do not accept his reconstruction of two sources in 189ndash 11 andthat the source of Hezekiah originally dealt with the fall of Samaria I suggestthat the opening of the narrative belonged to an alternative story namely Heze-kiahrsquos illness and miraculous recovery (2Kgs 201 Isa 381) which was movedfrom its original location to follow the narrative of Jerusalemrsquos divine salvationat a later editorial stage although chronologically it clearly preceded the eventsof 701 BCE In its current position it received the vague date םההםימיב ldquoin thosedaysrdquo

Consequently the synchronism cannot be used to correlate between the fallof Samaria and the reign of Hezekiah and thus Hezekiahrsquos accession should bedetermined to be in 715 BCE according to the data in 2Kgs 1813

Summing up this section it can be seen that 2Kgs 189ndash11 cannot be regard-ed as an original primary source It exhibits breaks in the text duplications re-dundancy abrupt change in subject glosses different styles and inconsisten-cies in the titles of kings and their orthography All these elements are crudesigns suggesting different sources stitched together Furthermore the synchron-isms do not conform to the numerous synchronisms in the Book of Kings itshould therefore be regarded as a secondary composition It seems that itwas edited and inserted into its current position by the Deuteronomistic histor-ian during the final years of the monarchy The raison drsquoetre of these synchron-isms is to relate the fall of Samaria and of the sinful king of Israel with the reignof Hezekiah the most pious Davidic king and to contrast their religious behav-iour and eventually between the fall of Samaria and the divine deliverance ofJerusalem This contrast is intended to convey an ideological message for the in-habitants of Judah namely that destruction and deportation are not unavoida-ble

The narrative cannot be regarded as historical or chronologically accuratesince Ahaz ndash a sinner in his own right ndash ruled as king of Judah during the fallof Samaria Maintaining the original chronology as it appears in 2Kgs 1813would miss the point of the didactic pericope

Let us return to the claim that the episode describing the fall of Samaria in2Kgs 173ndash6 was composed by merging two sources (either an Israelite and a Ju-dean source or an Israelite or Assyrian source with later additions by a redac-tor) based on the existence of a parallel in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 I hope I have shown


that it has scant foundation In the following I will survey the suggestions ofscholars who regarded 2Kgs 173ndash6 as a single source

3 2Kgs 173ndash6 a Coherent Text

John H Hayes and Jeffrey K Kuan⁵⁶ regard 2Kgs 173ndash6 as a coherent text andthe events described in it as consecutive They argue that there were four Assyr-ian campaigns against Samaria that Hoshea was imprisoned before the finalthree-year siege that Shalmaneser V ravaged Samaria in 725ndash724 BCE thatthe Samarians enthroned an anonymous king during the siege that Samariawas conquered by Shalmaneser just before his death and that Sargon neededto reconquer Samaria in 720 BCE

However without delving into the details of the research of Hayes and Kuansince it exceeds the scope of this paper there are chronological and historicalproblems⁵⁷ There is no evidence of an unnamed king in Samaria followingHoshea and the reliance of Hayes and Kuan on interpretations of the propheticBook of Hoshea seems exaggerated⁵⁸

4 One Main Source with Later RedactionalAdditions Corrections

Shemaryahu Talmon⁵⁹ noted that the factual account [in vv 5ndash6] did not containany formulaic references to the misdeeds of Samariarsquos rulers which abound inthe Book of Kings and are presented there as the causes of setbacks and disasterswhich befell their realm Talmon continues ldquohellip Furthermore such criticism isalso absent from the parallel version of that notation in 189ndash 11rdquo He concludesthat ldquothe doubling of the account of the conquest of Samaria together with theevident deviation of 175ndash6 from the conceptual framework of the book of Kingssuggests that this latter chronistic notion was quoted from a northern source Itmay well be a fragment of Ephraimite annalsrdquo (italics mine) The presumed Eph-

John H Hayes and Jeffrey K Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samariardquo Bib 72 (1991) 153ndash81 K Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fall Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61 (1999) 481 See the chapter by M Nissinen in this volume Shemaryahu Talmon ldquoPolemics and Apology in Biblical Historiography 2 Kings 1724ndash41rdquoin Shemaryahu Talmon Literary Studies in the Hebrew Bible Form and Content Collected Studies(Leiden Brill 1993) 137ndash46

244 Danrsquoel Kahn

raimite origin of 175ndash6 is supported by the absence of any synchronising formu-la of Hoshearsquos last years with the regnal years of the contemporaneous Judeanking Hezekiah Noting the Wiederaufnahme of v 5 ץראהלכברושאךלמלעיו fromv 3 רושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעוילע Talmon claims that the reference to Hoshearsquos con-spiracy with Egypt his refusal to pay tribute and his ensuing arrest by the kingof Assyria (v 4) is a secondary insert into the originally shorter text V 4 is thusregarded as an insert into an original Israelite source which included 173ndash6 andvv 24 29ndash31

However Talmon says nothing about the origin of the information of v 4Furthermore if only v 4 was a late insertion the text of v 3 ends with Hoshearsquossubmission and paying yearly tribute omitting his rebellion and resumes withthe Assyrian campaign against the entire land with no reason If v 3b should beconsidered a later addition as well it is not clear why the additional informationof v 4 was needed at all Nevertheless as noted before the mentioning of com-ing up against the king and the land should not be regarded as a Wiederauf-nahme and therefore v 4 should not be seen as an insertion

Vv 5ndash6 may come from an original Israelite source as Talmon asserts buthis reasoning that the absence of criticism for the Israelite king and his subjectsproves this can be challenged It seems highly probable that as in 2Kgs 1812there once existed an original theological reason in 2Kgs 179 for the punishmentof Israel as Ronnie Goldstein has suggested⁶⁰

Narsquoaman⁶sup1 regards 2Kgs 173ndash6 describing the fall of Samaria as a singlesource written by the Deuteronomistic Historian several hundred years afterthe events using earlier sources which Narsquoaman does not identify Accordingto Narsquoaman the Deuteronomistic Historian found only one Assyrian king ndash Shal-maneser ndash in the biblical text and mistakenly assigned the fall of Samaria tohim In fact it was Sargon who conquered Samaria as his numerous inscriptionsclaim According to the biblical data Samaria was conquered in Hoshearsquos ninthregnal year after a three year prolonged siege Narsquoaman claims that these datawere the result of historical deductions on the part of the Deuteronomistic His-torian who mistakenly interpreted his source material (which included the de-feat of Samaria three years after its rebellion and the incarceration of its king)as a prolonged siege which ended with the arrest of Hoshea in his ninth yearNarsquoaman assigned the fall of Samaria solely to the reign of Sargon Thus accord-ing to Narsquoaman the Deuteronomistic Historian got all his facts wrong

Ronnie Goldstein ldquoA Suggestion Regarding the Meaning of 2 Kings 17 9 and the Composi-tion of 2 Kings 17 7ndash23rdquo VT 63 (2013) 393ndash407 Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Backgroundrdquo 220ndash25


Gershon Galil⁶sup2 notes that the knowledge of the author of the Book of Kingswho wrote approximately 150 years after the events was only partial He did notknow that Judah remained a vassal following Sennacheribrsquos campaign in 701BCE and similarly he did not know that Hoshea was a vassal of Assyria alreadyduring the reign of Tiglath-pileser III He thus inserted v 3 describing Hoshearsquossubjugation to Shalmaneser For this he invented an alleged campaign by Shal-maneser which is not supported by extra-biblical evidence The rest of Samariarsquosdemise according to Galil was based on reliable sources originating from thebook of the chronicles of the kings of Judah Galil finds no evidence of an Israel-ite chronicle According to his reconstruction of the original Judean chroniclevv 4ndash6 existed and described the fall of Samaria according to the Judean regnaldates of Hezekiah and that the regnal years of Hoshea were edited into the textwhereas the dating according to Hezekiah was omitted along with the events ofHezekiahrsquos fifth year According to Galil two campaigns were conducted againstSamaria one in Shalmaneserrsquos reign after Hoshea rebelled in 723 BCE At the ad-vance of the Assyrian army Hoshea went out of Samaria to submit to the Assyr-ians in order to spare the kingdom but was arrested Assyria continued with thecampaign to subdue Samaria and besieged it from Shalmaneserrsquos last year He-zekiahrsquos fourth regnal year 722 BCE Upon the death of Shalmaneser the siegeprobably was eased due to lack of manpower and turned into a loose enclosurebut the Assyrian forces did not retreat

Galilrsquos reconstruction contradicts the synchronisms between the reign ofHoshea who ascended the throne in 7321 BCE and that of Hezekiah accordingto Galil Hoshearsquos seventh year is 725 BCE and his ninth year is 723 BCE Thesedates should correspond respectively to Hezekiahrsquos fourth regnal year whichGalil sets in 722 BCE and the sixth regnal year of Hezekiah who fell accordingto Galil in 720 BCE

In summary scholars who claim that the pericope describing the fall of Sa-maria originates from a single source suggest numerous mistakes and late inter-polations in the biblical text in order to uphold their theories and fit them to theextra-biblical sources

Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of Samariardquo CBQ 57(1995) 52ndash65

246 Danrsquoel Kahn

5 The Literary Solution

51 2Kgs 173ndash6 as a Literary Composition

I concur with Ernst Wuumlrthwein⁶sup3 and Trevor R Hobbs⁶⁴ that in vv 3ndash4 the authorof the pericope concentrated on the deeds of Hoshea his relations with the kingsof Assyria and Egypt and eventually his fate whereas vv 5ndash6 rather than re-counting a different series of events which followed those in vv 3ndash4 go overthe same events but this time with the emphasis on the effect of the invasionby the Assyrians on the city land and population of Samaria This can be dem-onstrated by following the verbs and pronouns in the different verses in vv 3ndash4verbs and pronouns describe Hoshea in the third person singular וילע יהיו בשיו

חלש הלעהאלו והרצעיו והרסאיו After describing the fate of the king during the fallof the city in Hoshearsquos ninth regnal year (7243 BCE) the author turns in v 5 todescribe the fate of the city of Samaria in the third person feminine הילערציו Fi-nally the author describes in v 6 the fate of the inhabitants of Samaria who areexiled to the Assyrian realm in the third person plural בשיוהרושאלארשי־תאלגיו

ידמירעוןזוגרהנרובחבוחלחבםתא This analysis solves all problems raised by schol-ars and enables a historical reconstruction of events in the days of Shalmanes-er V

52 A Stylistic Parallel in Sennacheribrsquos Royal Inscriptions

A fascinating parallel to this literary division of focus on the king the town andthe inhabitants can be found in the royal inscriptions of Sennacherib of Assyriaand his third campaign to the West As Tadmor has shown in his discussionabout the historiographic writing of Sennacheribrsquos scribes the third campaignof Sennacherib can be divided into six episodes These episodes were not neces-sarily organised in a chronological or geographical order but in a literary oneTadmor showed that four elements recur in these episodesa The fate of the rebellious king and kingship (the king either escapes is pun-

ished receives pardon remains in office or is reinstalled)b The fate of his kingdom and its townsc Taxes are levied on the re-subjugated towns and

Ernst Wuumlrthwein Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige 1 Koumln 17ndash2 Koumln 25 (Goumlttingen Vanderhoeck ampRuprecht 1984) 393ndash94 Trevor R Hobbs 2 Kings (Waco TX Word Books 1985) 225ndash26


d The fate of the inhabitants is recounted⁶⁵

The literary composition and order of 2Kgs 173ndash6 is very similar Firstly thedeeds of the king are described from his subjugation through his rebelliousplotting open rebellion and final imprisonment No mention is made of a sub-sequent king of Israel since Samaria was turned into a province without a localking Consequently in Sargonrsquos inscriptions the Samaritans are rebelling andthere is no mention of a king Secondly the fate of the kingdom and its capitalis described The land is destroyed and the capital city besieged until it is con-quered Thirdly no mention of yearly taxes is made after the conquest Andfourthly the inhabitants of Samaria are exiled and resettled in the Assyrian Em-pire

6 The Origin of the Text

In the following section I will summarise what can and cannot be said about theorigin of the text Admittedly I cannot identify the origin and this discussionwill be purely hypothetical

The information is dated to the reign of Hoshea It describes the politicalevents leading to the demise of the Kingdom of Israel These events are not de-scribed in a derogative fashion

As discussed above it seems that 2Kgs 173ndash6 is not composed from two dif-ferent chronicles either from Israel or from Judah Furthermore chronicles (atleast the Assyrian prototypes which are known to us) are normally shorter anddo not elaborate upon details There is no chronological listing of events accord-ing to the kingrsquos years (2Kgs 189ndash 10 is shown to be a fictitious chronology) Fur-thermore there is no clear annual development of the events The events of thebeginning of the reign the submission the conspiracy with Egypt and the openrebellion are not dated and the events of year 8 during the siege are entirelymissing Finally the events are not chronologically ordered as eg the impris-onment of Hoshea is mentioned before the capture of the city

Annals (at least the Assyrian annals) typically herald the deeds of the kingvictoriously in the first person singular boasting about the kingrsquos accomplish-ments This is not the case in 2Kgs 173ndash6 It seems therefore that the source

Hayim Tadmor ldquoSennacheribrsquos Campaign to Judah Historical and Historiographical Consid-erationsrdquo in ldquoWith My Many Chariots I Have Gone Up the Heights of the Mountainsrdquo Historicaland Literary Studies on Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel ed Mordechai Cogan (Jerusalem IsraelExploration Society 2011) 662ndash72

248 Danrsquoel Kahn

is not extracted from Israelite royal annals at least if they would have followedthe known Mesopotamian template

The composition exhibits literary traits and it is clearly not ordered chrono-logically It may derive from a sort of summary inscription of the reign organisedin a literary form

Should the narrative be regarded as having an Assyrian Israelite or Judeansource As for the claim that the information derives from an alleged Assyrianroyal inscription of Shalmaneser V⁶⁶ describing the Fall of Samaria ndash there isno concrete evidence for the existence of such a text on which 2Kgs 171ndash6could have been based However if Ronnie Goldstein⁶⁷ is correct in identifyingan early strata in 2Kgs 177ndash23 using Neo-Assyrian calques in 2Kgs 179 it cancautiously be accepted that the original narrative imitated Neo-Assyrian treatyterminology reflecting Israelite theology which blamed the Kingdom of Israelfor political covenantal trespass The Israelites did not obey the Lord andbroke his covenant and for this were severely punished Similar attempts to ex-plain Israelrsquos demise can be found in 2Kgs 1812 Comparable accusations wereforwarded in Ezek 1711ndash21 by a Judean author against Zedekiah the last Judeanking suggesting that he broke the covenant with god by rebelling against Bab-ylonia

I would therefore like to suggest cautiously that 2Kgs 173ndash6 may have beencomposed by Israelite court scribes in the short period following the destructionwhen Israel became an Assyrian province and before it was reconquered by Sar-gon who radically changed its demography and administration Such a compo-sition can be compared to the description of the end of the Kingdom of Judah byits own scribes The narrative was eventually reworked and incorporated into theBook of Kings by Judean scribeswho stressed the cultic abominations and trans-gressions which according to them brought about the downfall of the kingdomof Israel

See the suggestions by Brettler and Oded discussed above in sections 22 and 23 Cf alsoNovotnyrsquos chapter in this volume Goldstein ldquoA Suggestion Regarding the Meaning of 2 Kings 17 9rdquo


Christoph Levin

In Search of the Original Biblical Recordof the Assyrian Conquest of Samaria

1 Introduction Two Parallel Records

The conquest of Samaria by the Assyrian great king is recorded two times in theBook of Kings The first account is to be found in 2Kgs 173ndash6 in the framework ofthe section that deals with king Hoshea of Israel This is the place where onewould expect it The second account in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 is part of the section thatrelates the history of king Hezekiah of Judah (Fig 1)

The second record is usually seen as secondary and rightly so The sectiondisrupts the connection that originally existed between the note about Heze-

Fig 1 Synoptic table presenting the text of 2Kgs 173ndash6 (first column) and 2Kgs 189ndash12(second column) Prepared by the author

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-012

kiahrsquos rebellion against the Assyrian king in 187b and the account of Sennacher-ibrsquos campaign which is given from 1813 onward ldquoHe rebelled against the kingof Assyria and would not serve him [hellip] In the fourteenth year of King HezekiahSennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah andtook themrdquo These two phrases once followed one another immediatelysup1

In most parts 189ndash 11 corresponds almost verbatim with 173 5ndash6 This isbest explained by direct copying It raises the question of why a record was re-peated which every reader had already come across in the preceding section ofthe book The answer might be found in those phrases that go beyond the Vor-lage and have no equivalent in it the synchronistic dates in 189 10 and thetheological comment in v 12

2 The Origin of 2Kgs 189ndash12

The first excess is the date of Shalmaneserrsquos campaign in v 9 It was put in frontof the original beginning of the record

שיךלמהלא־ןבעשוהלתיעיבשההנשהאיהוהיקזחךלמלתיעיברההנשביהיו רושא־ךלמרסאנמלשהלעלאר

In the fourth year of king Hezekiah which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king ofIsrael Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up

A similar synchronism is added to the date of the conquest in v 10

שיךלמעשוהלעשת־תנשאיההיקזחלשש־תנשבםינששלשהצקמgtהדכליו ןורמשהדכלנלאר gt

ltAnd he captured itgtsup2 at the end of three years In the sixth year of Hezekiah which was theninth year of Hoshea king of Israel Samaria was captured

The note in 188 about a great victory over the Philistines ldquocannot be attributed to an authen-tic sourcerdquo either as Martin Noth The Deuteronomistic History (Sheffield Sheffield AcademicPress 1981 trans J Doull et al) 132 n 17 stated The verse begins similarly to v 4 compare

םיתשלפ־תאהכה־אוה ldquohe was the one who smote the Philistinesrdquo with תומבה־תאריסהאוה ldquohewas the one who removed the high placesrdquo This is meaningful Most probably the victoryover the Philistines was invented because Hezekiahrsquos piety should not go unrewarded The com-bination הילובג־תאוהזע ldquoGaza and its territoryrdquo is ldquoobjectionable and we should expect םלובג rdquoso Bernhard Stade and Friedrich Schwally The Books of Kings (Leipzig Hinrich 1904) 269 Itmay be borrowed from Judg 118 הלובג־תאוהזע The expression רצבמריע־דעםירצונלדגממ ldquofromwatchtower to fortified cityrdquo (which is repeated in 2Kgs 179) is reminiscent of Josh 1929

רצ־רצבמריע־דעו ldquoto the fortified city of Tyrerdquo The Qerecirc הדכליו ldquoand they captured itrdquo is better vocalized as הדכליו ldquoand he captured itrdquo in ac-cordance with the Septuagint the Peshitta and the Vulgate However the Antiochian text reads

252 Christoph Levin

In the second case there can again be little doubt that the synchronism is anexpansion compared to 175bndash6

ןורמש־תארושא־ךלמדכלעשוהלתיעישתהתנשבםינששלשהילערציוןורמשלעיו

He came up to Samaria and he besieged it for three years In the ninth year of Hoshea theking of Assyria captured Samaria

In 175b the duration of the siege is given with ldquothree yearsrdquo In 1810 the durationhas become the date of the conquest ldquoAnd he captured it at the end ( הצקמ ) ofthree yearsrdquo In order to incorporate the synchronism the verb הדכליו ldquoand hecaptured itrdquo had to be repeated towards the end of the verse הדכלנ ldquoit was cap-turedrdquo The doublet shows the secondary expansion In the same process thesubject רושא־ךלמ was moved to v 11 compare שי־תארושא־ךלמלגיו הרושאלאר in1811 with שי־תאלגיו הרושאלאר in 176 ldquoAnd he the king of Assyria carried Israelaway to Assyriardquo

There is one difficulty remaining It relates to the form of the dating in 176Instead of עשוהלתיעישתהתנשב ldquoin the ninth year of Hosheardquo one should expecteither עשוהלתיעישתההנשביהיו ldquoand it happened in the ninth year of Hosheardquo(compare 189) or עשוהלעשת־תנשב ldquoin year nine of Hosheardquo as in 1810sup3I would prefer the latter for the original reading Possibly this was the readingat the time when the text was copied to 1810 and it was later changed intothe present form

Why was the record of the conquest of Samaria expanded in such a way Thesynchronisms relate the reign of the king of Judah to that of the king of Israel Itis emphasized that the conquest of Samaria took place exactly at the time whenHezekiah was king in Judah Compared to 2Kgs 17 the version of 2Kgs 18 depicts asharp contrast between the two kings the wicked Hoshea who was punishedand the pious Hezekiah who was saved

This is quite in line with v 12 where a reason is added to explain why Israelhas been carried away to Assyria

ושעאלוועמשאלוהוהידבעהשמהוצרשא־לכתאותירב־תאורבעיוםהיהלאהוהילוקבועמש־אלרשאלע

Because they did not obey the voice of Yahweh their God but transgressed his covenant allthat Moses the servant of Yahweh commanded they neither obeyed nor observed

the plural καὶ κατελάβοντο see Natalio Fernaacutendez Marcos and Joseacute Ramoacuten Busto Saiz El TextoAntioqueno de la Biblia griega 1ndash2 Reyes (Madrid Instituto de Filologiacutea del CSIC 1992) 136 There are more examples of the irregular style however see 2Kgs 251 Jer 281 Keticircb 321 Keticircb462 5159 Ezra 78 and GKC sect134p


The addition of v 12 was most clearly identified by Albert Šanda ldquoThis verse cer-tainly does not come from R [= the editor of the Book of Kings] In this contextone expects an objective report with no moralizing remarksrdquo⁴ The note adds tothe historical details a theological rationale Israel has sinned and therefore hadto suffer its awful fate

The phrases used for this comment are familiar from the latest literary layersof the Book of Deuteronomy and from those books of the Old Testament whichpresuppose Deuteronomy הוהילוקבעמשאל ldquonot to obey the voice of Yahwehrdquomarks the disobedience to the Deuteronomic law and later to the Torah in gen-eral⁵ The earliest instances relating to the divine law are to be found in Deut281 15⁶ הוהיתירברבע ldquoto transgress the covenant of Yahwehrdquo⁷ (instead of theregular תירברפה ldquoto break the covenantrdquo⁸) presents the late concept in whichYahwehrsquos covenant and the Torah are one and the same thing

This is made clearer still by the apposition הוהידבעהשמהוצרשא־לכתא ldquoallthat Moses the servant of Yahweh commandedrdquo The phrase is parallel to Josh17 13 831 33 1112 222 5 1Chr 634 All of these instances belong to the literarysphere of the Priestly code or to the post-priestly Deuteronomism roughly speak-ing The title הוהידבע as applied to Moses⁹ Joshuasup1⁰ and Davidsup1sup1 is late through-out This part of the verse may be a later clarification by another hand It isadded without a copula The resumption of ועמש־אלרשאלע ldquobecause they didnot obeyrdquo by ושעאלוועמשאל ldquothey neither obeyed nor observedrdquo at the endof the verse also supports this possibility

The comment wants to assure the reader that the conquest of Samaria wasdue to Israelrsquos sins The defeat is interpreted as having been a divine punish-

Albert Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige vol 2 (Muumlnster Aschendorff 1912) 244 (my translation)Šanda continues ldquoR has added his judgment already in 1721ndash23 The content [= of v 12] is veryreminiscent of 1734ndash40rdquo Num 1422 Deut 820 923 2815 45 62 Josh 56 Judg 22 20 610 1Sam 1215 1519 28181Kgs 2036 2Kgs 1812 Jer 325 728 912 2221 3223 403 4221 437 4423 cf Zeph 32 Ps10625 Dan 910 14 For the origin of the phrase see Christoph Levin Die Verheiszligung des neuen Bundes (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1985) 108 n 136 Deut 172 2911 Josh 711 15 2316 2Kgs 1812 Jer 3418 Hos 67 81 תירבררפ hi ldquoto break a covenantrdquo profanepolitically 1Kgs 15192Chr 163 Isa 338 Ezek 171516 18 19 related to the covenant with Yahweh on the human side Gen 1714 Lev 2615 Deut3116 20 Isa 245 Jer 1110 3132 Ezek 1659 447 on the divine side Lev 2644 Judg 21 Jer1421 Zech 1110 cf Jer 3320 f Deut 345 Josh 11 13 15 831 33 1112 126 138 147 187 222 4 5 2429 2Kgs 1812 2Chr 13246 Josh 2429 Judg 28 Ps 181 361

254 Christoph Levin

mentWith this statement we have a relative dating for the section 2Kgs 189ndash12as a whole ldquoTherefore the entire group of verses 9ndash12 is the work of a later post-exilic redactor who according to his way of thinking and his language is in linewith the author of 1734ndash40rdquosup1sup2 It does not go back to the edition of the Deuter-onomistic History in the 6th century BCE but was added much later towards theera when the Book of Kings had become the Vorlage for Chronicles and had beensubmitted to the theological doctrine of divine retribution which dominatesChronicles throughout This doctrine can occasionally be observed in the earlierhistorical books as well however mostly in the form of literary additions

3 The Later Additions in 2Kgs 173ndash6

There is also a large part of the Vorlage 173ndash6 that is missing in 189ndash 12sup1sup3

רשארשקעשוהברושא־ךלמאצמיו4החנמולבשיודבעעשוהול־יהיורושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעוילע3והרסאיורושאךלמוהרצעיו]הנשבהנשכרושאךלמלהחנמהלעה־אלו[םירצמ־ךלמאוס־לאםיכאלמחלשםינששלשהילערציוןורמשלעיוץראה־לכברושא־ךלמלעיו5אלכתיב

3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria and Hoshea became his vassal andpaid him tribute 4 And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea for he had sent mes-sengers to So king of Egypt [and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done yearby year]sup1⁴ and the king of Assyria restrained him and bound him in prison 5 And the king ofAssyria came up in all the land and came up to Samaria and besieged it for three years

In the additional text it is related that Shalmaneserrsquos campaign was in the firstinstance directed against king Hoshea himself As a consequence Hoshea waspressed into vassalage and had to pay tribute every year After some years Hosh-ea rebelled against his Assyrian overlord He tried to establish diplomatic tieswith some Egyptian king Shalmaneser put him into prison and came up againstthe whole country

This outline of the events confronts us with a number of difficulties(1) In his inscriptions king Tiglath-pileser III claims that Hoshea came to

rule as his vassalsup1⁵ The assertion of 2Kgs 173 that Hoshearsquos vassalage had startedonly with Shalmaneser contradicts what is known from the Assyrian records

Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige vol 2 244ndash45 (my translation) In the following translation the minuses of 189ndash 12 and the pluses of 173ndash6 are marked byitalics Verse 4aβ is a later expansion For the source-critical arguments see below Summary Inscription 4 17ndash9 and Summary Inscription 9 rev 9ndash 10 text Hayim TadmorThe Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences


(2) Though the verb הלע is repeated no less than three times ( הלע in v 3 andלעיו twice in v 5) there are no signs that the text wants to tell us of more than one

campaign of Shalmaneser This is in line with the date given by the parallel re-cord in 2Kgs 189

(3) However it contradicts what is said in 174 namely that Hoshea paid histribute ldquoyear by yearrdquo ( הנשבהנשכ ) This seems to indicate that several yearspassed between the beginning of Hoshearsquos vassalage and Shalmaneserrsquos cam-paign against Samaria

(4) From the sequence as the text tells it one gets the impression that kingHoshea was put into prison prior to the siege of Samaria This raises the questionof who would have reigned in the city for the three years of the siege and couldhave led the resistance against the Assyrian campaign ldquoIt is [hellip] highly improb-able that Israel remained for three years without a king after the deposition ofHoshea and as a matter of fact v 6 states that the fall of the capital took placelsquoin the ninth year of Hoshearsquo ie in his ninth reigning yearrdquosup1⁶

(5) There is an awkward doublet at the beginning of v 5 רושא־ךלמלעיוהילערציוןורמשלעיוץראה־לכב ldquoAnd the king of Assyria came up in all the land

and he came up to Samaria and he besieged itrdquo This is all the more strikingsince Shalmaneser must already have been in the land in order to bind Hosheain prison as is said immediately before in v 4

(6) The style of the passage is clumsy to some degree In v 5a the subjectרושא־ךלמ is unnecessarily repeated though it does not change Hebrew narratives

usually try to avoid such redundancy(7) These observations are not due to modern criticism only but are mirrored

already in the textual tradition that in the case of the Old Greek or its Vorlagedeviates from the Masoretic text quite remarkably different to the surroundingversessup1⁷

In order to solve these problems Hugo Winckler proposed what could becalled a documentary hypothesis His idea was that two different sources had

and Humanities 1994) 140 and 188 = Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptionsof Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) no 42 and no 49 translation James B Pritchard (ed) AncientNear Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press1955 2nd edition) 284 William W Hallo (ed) The Context of Scripture vol 2 Monumental In-scriptions from the Biblical World (Leiden Brill 2000) nos 117C and 117F Mordechai CoganThe Raging Torrent Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Israel (Jerusa-lem Carta 2015 2nd edition) 73 and 68 Charles F Burney Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Kings (Oxford Clarendon 1903)328 See the chapter of Timo Tekoniemi in this volume

256 Christoph Levin

been interwoven in 2Kgs 173ndash6 both of them conveying the same historicalevent but from different perspectivessup1⁸ ldquoIt seems easiest to suppose that thefirst of the two biblical sections [ie in 2Kgs 173ndash6] presents a combination oftwo records of the same event taken from two different sources in such a waythat ch 173ndash4 is a second narrative of the events recorded in 175bndash6 the lattertaken from the same source as 189ndash 11 with which it agrees almost word forword At the least this assumption would solve all of the contradictions and dif-ficultiesrdquosup1⁹ The one of these accounts which according to Winckler is to befound in vv 5ndash6 relates the rebellion of king Hoshea as well as his captureby Shalmaneser The other account tells the conquest of Samaria roughly inthe same form as it is also preserved in the parallel 189ndash 10Winckler maintainsthat both records are reliable in terms of history Hoshearsquos rebellion having beenthe reason for Shalmaneserrsquos campaign From this follows that the capture ofking Hoshea and the conquest of Samaria actually fell at the same time Sofor Winckler the two accounts are to be read as parallel versions other thanthe present text wherein the editor of the Book of Kings set them in a sequencewhen he merged the two sources into a single record

In accordance with the Assyrian sources ndash and contrary to 2Kgs 173 ndashWinck-ler holds that Hoshea came to the throne as a vassal of Tiglath-pileser In order tosolve the contradictionWinckler states ldquoThe whole difficulty would disappear ifwe assume that the editor read דבעולהיהו instead of דבעוליהיו in 173 The mean-ing of his source would have been lsquoHoshea became king Against him came upShalmaneser because he was his vassal and had to pay him tribute But the kingof Assyria found treachery in him etc and bound him in prisonrsquordquosup2⁰ Unfortunate-ly this reading has no basis in the textual transmission as Winckler himself ad-mitssup2sup1 moreover as Charles F Burney stated ldquosuch a construction is impossi-blerdquosup2sup2 followed by Bernhard Stade and Friedrich Schwally ldquoWincklerrsquos [hellip]

Hugo Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidung der Koumlnigsbuumlcherrdquo in id AlttestamentlicheUntersuchungen (Leipzig Pfeiffer 1892) 1ndash54 esp 16ndash25 Wincklerrsquos hypothesis was acceptedby Immanuel Benzinger Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Freiburg iB Mohr Siebeck 1899) 172ndash73 byBurney Notes 328ndash29 and by John Gray I amp II Kings A Commentary (London SCM Press1970 2nd edition) 642 ldquoVerses 3 f probably from the Annals of Israel vv 5 f from the Annalsof Judah (cf 189ndash11) both summarized with vv 3bndash4a in loose parenthesisrdquo Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidungrdquo 20 (my translation) Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidungrdquo 22 (my translation) Winckler ldquoBeitraumlge zur quellenscheidungrdquo 22 n 3 ldquoIt is improbable that there is a mistakein our textual tradition because all recensions MT as well as LXX witness יהיו rdquo Burney Notes 329 who nevertheless keeps Wincklerrsquos source critical hypothesis


conjecture [hellip] maltreats the Hebrew language for Hosea was his vassal is not inHebrew דבעולעשוההיהו rdquosup2sup3

However Wincklerrsquos hypothesis is not completely obsolete He rightly as-sumes that vv 3ndash4 give another view of the events around the conquest of Sa-maria But his solution is wrong The other version does not go back to a differ-ent source It constitutes a later comment on what was transmitted in one singlesource It is an annotation that tells what should have happened for theologicalreasons but as we know from the Assyrian sources never happened in historyThose elements of the text that are missing in 189ndash10 did not exist at the timewhen the text had been copied there They are scribal additions

Above we have seen that the version of 2Kgs 18 is of very late origin becausev 12 shows features that are near to Chronicles This is true also of 173bndash5aWhereas in 2Kgs 18 the emphasis is on the contrast between the two kingsthe pious Hezekiah on the one hand and the wicked Hoshea on the otherand the different fate of these two it is no surprise that the editor who added173bndash5a also focused on Hoshearsquos personal guilt and his fate

The addition follows the theological doctrine of retribution Someonersquos fatehad to be in line with someonersquos behavior Because Hoshea was punished by theAssyrian king he must have sinned against the Assyrian king The scribe sug-gested that Hoshea rebelled against Shalmaneser In order to demonstratethis it is at first said that he became Shalmaneserrsquos vassal דבעעשוהול־יהיו Hoshea submitted to his overlord by paying tribute החנמולבשיו The one whoadded these details did not care whether the sequence of events would be pos-sible in terms of history He simply wanted to sketch the initial situation that waslater changed by Hoshearsquos rebellion

The phrase -ברשקאצמ ldquoto find conspiracy in someonerdquo occurs only oncemore in Jer 119 ldquoConspiracy is found ( רשקאצמנ ) among the people of Judahand the inhabitants of Jerusalemrdquo In the historical books except for 2Kgs 174the noun רשק is used exclusively for a conspiracy against the king of Israel orJudahsup2⁴ To indicate a rebellion against the Assyrian or Babylonian overlordthe verb דרמ is used (2Kgs 187 241 20) The scribe deviates from the terminologyof the Book of Kings in favor of the language of prophecy He indicates thatHoshearsquos rebellion against the Assyrian king was also directed against Yahwehsup2⁵

Stade and Schwally The Books of Kings 260 2Sam 1512 1Kgs 1620 2Kgs 1114 1221 1419 151 30 The Septuagint (kaige-recension) translates ἀδικία = רקש ldquodeceptionrdquo thus emphasizing thetheological statement that may be implied See Alfred Rahlfs and Robert Hanhart (eds) Septua-ginta Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes (Stuttgart Deutsche Bibelgesell-schaft 2006 2nd edition) sub loco

258 Christoph Levin

In order to illustrate Hoshearsquos disloyalty it is said that he sent messengers tothe Egyptian king of that time םירצמ־ךלמאוס־לאםיכאלמחלשרשא ldquofor he has sentmessengers to Sōʾ king of Egyptrdquo The purpose of the delegation is not indicat-ed but can easily be supplemented by the reader Ahaz asked the king of Egyptfor an alliance against the Assyrian king and offered him his submission Thisaction was seen as a severe fault by the theologians of the late Second TemplePeriod We know from the Book of Chronicles that it meant sinning against theGod Yahweh in a very strong way if the kings of Israel and Judah made allianceswith foreign kings As a consequence each attempt is punished by military de-feat or disastersup2⁶

This doctrine may be labeled Koalitionsverbot (ldquoprohibition of coalition withforeign powersrdquo) It also found its way into the Book of Kings In 2Kgs 167 it issaid that king Ahaz of Judah called Tiglath-pileser for help when he was attackedby king Rezin of Aram and king Pekah of Israel Here we read nearly the sameexpression as in 173

ךלמףכמוםרא־ךלמףכמינעשוהוהלעינאךנבוךדבערמאלרושא־ךלמרסלפתלגת־לאםיכאלמזחאחלשיושי ילעםימוקהלאר

And Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria saying I am your servant andyour son Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Aram and from the hand ofthe king of Israel who are attacking me

This verse is a late addition to the record about Ahazrsquos submission to Tiglath-pi-leser when he was attacked by Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel The originaltext is to be found in 2Kgs 165a bα 8 9aβγ b ldquoThen Rezin king of Aram andPekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to wage war on Jerusalemand they besieged Ahaz [hellip] So Ahaz took the silver and gold that was foundin the house of Yahweh and in the treasures of the kingrsquos house and sent a pres-ent to the king of Assyria [hellip] And the king of Assyria marched up against Dam-ascus and took it carrying its people captive [hellip] and he killed Rezinrdquo The ad-dition stresses that with Ahazrsquos submission to the Assyrian king he refused thepromise that Yahweh had given to David ldquoI will be his father and he shall be mysonrdquo (2Sam 714) This behavior was counted as a severe fault

The same doctrine is also to be found in the Book of Isaiah as well as in theBook of Hoshea ldquoEphraim is like a dove silly and without sense calling to

Older research was already aware of this doctrine In more recent times it was especially in-vestigated by Tetsuo Yamaga ldquoKoumlnig Joschafat und seine Auszligenpolitik in den ChronikbuumlchernrdquoAJBI 27 (2001) 59ndash 154


Egypt going to Assyriardquo (Hos 711 cf 122)sup2⁷ ldquoWoe to the rebellious children saysYahweh who carry out a plan but not mine and who make a league but not ofmy spirit that they may add sin to sin who set out to go down to Egypt withoutasking for my counsel to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seekshelter in the shadow of Egyptrdquo (Isa 301ndash2 cf 311) There are strong reasons toassume that statements like these do not go back to the prophets of the 8th cen-tury but originate in the time of the Chronicler ie in the Hellenistic era

No one knows who םירצמ־ךלמאוס ldquoSōʾ king of Egyptrdquo could have been ldquoNoknown king of Egypt at this time (ca 725 BC) bore this name a circumstance allthe more remarkable in view of the transparent nature of all the other Old Testa-ment allusions to the names of Egyptian rulersrdquosup2⁸ The guessing game began al-ready in the Antiochian text of the Septuagint (or its Hebrew Vorlage) whichreads διότι ἀπέστειλεν ἀγγέλους πρὸς Aδραμέλεχ τὸν Αἰθίοπα τὸν κατοικοῦνταἐν Αἰγύπτῳ ldquofor he sent messengers to Adrammelech the Ethiopian who dweltin Egyptrdquosup2⁹ With high probability this reading rests on Midrashic assumptionssup3⁰Possibly it is based on 2Kgs 1937 where it is said that Adrammelech killed kingSennacherib of Assyria in combination with 2Kgs 199 where it is said that theking of Assyria heard that king Tirhaka of Ethiopia went out to fight againsthim The details may still reflect the original text which tells of an Egyptianking Therefore the title ldquokingrdquo is left out and Adrammelech though being anEthiopian should have dwelled in Egypt

James A Montgomery and Henry Snyder Gehman The Books of Kings (Edinburgh TampT Clark1951) 465 ldquoThese shifting alliances of the day now with Assyria now with Egypt are illustratedin the prophet Hoshearsquos scornful references (513 78 11 16 89 115 122 144)rdquo It is highly ques-tionable whether these statements go back to the prophet himself John Day ldquoThe Problem of lsquoSo King of Egyptrsquo in 2 Kings xvii 4rdquo VT 42 (1992) 289ndash301esp 289 Day presents a survey of the proposals produced so far He finally argues in favor ofthe place name of Sais the capital city of Tefnakht This possibility was however rejectedwith strong arguments by among others Bernd Schipper ldquoWer war lsquoSoʾ Koumlnig von Aumlgypten᾽(2 Koumln 174)rdquo BN 92 (1998) 71ndash84 esp 74ndash75 Fernaacutendez Marcos and Busto Saiz El Texto Antioqueno 131ndash2 The reading is shared by theCodex Vindobonensis see Bonifatius Fischer ldquoPalimpsestus Vindobonensis A Revised Editionof L115 for Samuel-Kingsrdquo BIOSCS 16 (1983) 13ndash87 esp 86 Andreacutes Piquer Otero ldquoWhat Text to Edit The Oxford Hebrew Bible Edition of 2 Kings171ndash23rdquo in After Qumran Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts ndash the HistoricalBooks ed Hans Ausloos Beacuteneacutedicte Lemmelijn and Julio Trebolle Barrera (Leuven Peeters2012) 227ndash43 esp 233ndash35 still looks for some historical basis ndash to my mind this would be mis-conceiving the assumptive nature of the text

260 Christoph Levin

It is mostly suggested that the name Sōʾ refers to Pharaoh Osorkon IVsup3sup1 Butthere is no clear indication for this suggestion nor any linguistic support for itMost probably the glossator did not refer to an individual king The figure of thisPharaoh may be pure fantasy Some scholars read his name Sōʾ as an abbreviat-ed form of the Egyptian word for ldquokingrdquo nj-śwt rarr nśwt rarr nśw rarr Sōʾsup3sup2 Thishowever cannot be proven eithersup3sup3 In any case we do not have to search inthe 8th century BCE because the note in 2Kgs 174 originates in the late Persianor early Hellenistic era

In v 4aβ there are some divergences in the textual transmissionWhereas theHebrew text reads הנשבהנשכרושאךלמלהחנמהלעה־אלו ldquoand he offered no tributeto the king of Assyria as he had done year by yearrdquosup3⁴ the Antiochian textsup3⁵ pres-ents some explication καὶ ἦν Ὡσῆε φέρων δῶρα τῷ βασιλεῖ ἀσσυρίων ἐνιαυτὸνκατrsquo ἐνιαυτὸν ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐνιαυτῷ ἐκείνῳ οὐκ ἤνεγκεν αὐτῷ μαναά ldquoAnd Hosheabrought gifts to the king of Assyria year by year but that year he offered no trib-ute to himrdquo This version seems to be much more natural since in v 3 it is saidonly that Hoshea paid tribute to the king of Assyria ( החנמולבשיו ) which does notunequivocally imply that he was to do so every year However the lectio longioratque facilior hardly presents the original reading It is rather an indication thatthis detail of the rebellion was added only later Again the terminology is signif-icant The expression החנמהלעה־אל ldquohe did not offer tributerdquo is strange in thiscontext because החנמהלע hi is otherwise used exclusively for the grain-offeringto Yahwehsup3⁶ So we may conclude that this part of v 4 is a still later addition

Hoshea is said to have been punished for his disloyalty by Shalmaneserאלכתיבוהרסאיורושאךלמוהרצעיו ldquothe king of Assyria restrained him and bound

See (among many others) Manfred Goumlrg ldquoSordquo Neues Bibellexikon vol 3 ed Manfred Goumlrg(Zuumlrich Benziger 2001) 622 Schipper ldquoWer war Soʾrdquo 77ndash79 This was first suggested by Herbert Donner ldquoThe Separate States of Israel and Judahrdquo inIsraelite and Judean History ed John H Hayes and J Maxwell Miller (London SCM Press1977) 381ndash434 esp 433 followed by Rolf Krauss ldquoSō Koumlnig von Aumlgypten ndash ein Deutungsvor-schlagrdquo MDOG 110 (1978) 49ndash54 who added some linguistic support based on late evidenceinvolving the history of language (ldquoRuumlckschluszlig der auf sprachgeschichtlich jungen Belegen ber-uhtrdquo 54) In any case the presupposition that ldquoSōʾ is attested for the time around 725 BCErdquo (50my translation) is to be doubted because 2Kgs 174 is historically unreliable See the strong objections referred to by Schipper ldquoWer war Soʾrdquo 80ndash81 The Hebrew text is supported by the kaige recension of the Septuagint see Rahlfs and Han-hart Septuaginta sub loco For הנשבהנשכ the Greek text reads ἐν τῷ ἐνιαυτῷ ἐκείνῳ It is doubt-ful whether this reading goes back to a different Vorlage ( איהההנשב ) According to the edition by Fernaacutendez Marcos and Busto Saiz El Texto Antioqueno 132 Exod 309 4029 Lev 1420 Josh 2223 Isa 576 663 Jer 1412 See Otto Thenius Die Buumlcherder Koumlnige (Leipzig Weidmannrsquosche Buchhandlung 1849) 369 ldquo הלעה ] it is to be noted that thisword is otherwise used exclusively for offeringrdquo (my translation)


him in prisonrdquo Hoshea was bound that means he had to share the fate that kingJehoahaz suffered from Pharaoh Necho (2Kgs 2333) king Zedekiah from Nebu-chadnezzar (2Kgs 257) and king Manasseh from the commanders of the Assyrianarmy (2Chr 3311) Notably enough in each of these four cases exactly the sameverbal form is used והרסאיו The editor does not say what happened to Hosheafurther on but the reader of the Bible could appreciate that the other three kingswere deported This was also the case with king Jehoiachin who is said in 2Kgs2527 to have finally been released from prison ( אלכתיב )

All in all these are clear indications that the longer record of 2Kgs 173ndash5 aswe now read it is to be understood as a theological comment in narrative formoriginating around the time when the Book of Chronicles was about to be writ-ten The details given are not intended to be read as historical information

4 The Original Record

Finally in order to restore the original biblical record of the Assyrian conquest ofSamaria we have to look at those parts of the text that are shared by both of theparallel sections in 2Kgs 17 and 2Kgs 18 accordingly The text that is common toboth records is what the scribe of 2Kgs 189ndash12 found in 2Kgs 173ndash6 when hecopied it and added his comments to it and into which the glossator of 2Kgs173ndash6 inserted the additional details in vv 3bndash5a

In 173 par 189 רושא־ךלמרסאנמלשהלע is common to both versions ldquoShalma-neser the king of Assyria came uprdquo However it is hard to imagine that the per-fect הלע was the original beginning ndash though there is also one example of it in1519 ץראה־לערושא־ךלמלופאב ldquoPul (ie Tiglath-pileser) the king of Assyria cameagainst the landrdquo Preferably we have to look for some other reading

One possibility is that the section began with the narrative לעיו as is the casein 1Kgs 1517 שי־ךלמאשעבלעיו הדוהי־לעלאר ldquoBaasha king of Israel went up againstJudahrdquo and in 2Kgs 1514 ןורמשאביוהצרתמידג־ןבםחנמלעיו ldquoMenahem the son ofGadi came up from Tirzah and came to Samariardquo Also a temporal adverb canprecede the verb as in 2Kgs 1218 הדכליותג־לעםחליוםראךלמלאזחהלעיזא ldquoAtthat time Hazael king of Aram went up and fought against Gath and took itrdquoand in 2Kgs 2329 תרפ־רהנ־לערושאךלמ־לעםירצמ־ךלמהכנהערפהלעוימיב ldquoIn hisdays Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Eu-phratesrdquo Finally an exact date could have been given as in 1Kgs 1425 הנשביהיו

םלשורי־לעםירצמ־ךלמקשושהלעםעבחרךלמלתישימחה ldquoIn the fifth year of king Re-hoboam Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalemrdquo Following thelast example and taking in account the synchronism in 2Kgs 189 (which ofcourse has to be shortened as shown above) the original beginning could

262 Christoph Levin

have been like this ןורמש־לערושא־ךלמרסאנמלשהלעעשוהךלמלתיעיבשההנשביהיוldquoIn the seventh year of king Hoshea Shalmaneser king of Assyria came upagainst Samariardquo There are no means that help us decide among these alterna-tives However to my mind the last possibility is the most probable because itcould also have provided the basis for the synchronism in 189 which otherwisemust have been calculated from the ninth year of Hoshea in 176 and the threeyears of the siege in 175

In any case the pronoun וילע which opens 173 cannot be original for it refersto the data given for king Hoshea in vv 1ndash2 These data go back to anothersource the synchronistic excerpt of the annals of the kings of Israel andJudahsup3⁷ The present form of 173 is focused on the person of king Hoshea וילע

רסאנמלשהלע ldquoagainst him came up Shalmaneserrdquo Because this is in line withthe addition in vv 3bndash5a the change of the original reading may go back tothe same glossator The new point he made is balanced by v 5a רושא־ךלמלעיו

ץראה־לכב ldquoAnd the king of Assyria came up in all the landrdquo That means afterpunishing king Hoshea the Assyrian king turned towards the whole land takingup and continuing his campaign against Samaria This is again an addition ascan be seen from the double לעיו in v 5b Possibly the prefix ־לע that is still pre-served in 189 was lost in favor of לעיו which resumes the original הלע of v 3

Because 176 par 1810ndash 11 presents no major differences as a result of ourinquiry we have the supposed original record so far

תנשבםינששלשהילערציוןורמשgt־לעlthellipרושאךלמרסאנמלשהלעgtעשוהךלמלתיעיבשההנשביהיוltשי־תאלגיוןורמש־תארושא־ךלמדכלעשוהלgtעשתlt ידמירעוןזוגרהנרובחבוחלחבםתאבשיוהרושאלאר

In the seventh year of King Hoshea came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria against Samariaand besieged it for three years In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria capturedSamaria and he carried Israel away to Assyria and placed them in Halah and on theHabor the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes

Like the similar records about military attacks of foreign kings that are recordedin the Book of Kings this source is probably taken from an official documentused by the editor of the Book of Kings (ie the Deuteronomistic historian)when he composed his major work It can be continued with the note in 2Kgs1724 about the re-settlement of Samaria

See Christoph Levin ldquoThe Synchronistic Excerpt from the Annals of the Kings of Israel andJudahrdquo in id Re-Reading the Scriptures Essays on the Literary History of the Old Testament (Tuuml-bingen Mohr Siebeck 2013) 183ndash93


שיינבתחתןורמשירעבבשיו[םיורפסותמחמואועמוהתוכמולבבמרושא־ךלמאביו ןורמש־תאושריו]לארהירעבובשיו

And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon Cuthah Avva Hamath and Sephar-vaim [and made them dwell in the cities of Samaria instead of the Israelites]sup3⁸ and theytook possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities

The expression ldquoSamaria and its citiesrdquo witnesses that ldquoSamariardquo is not the nameof the city anymore but of the Assyrian province So the document tells aboutthe events in hindsight

I may underline that in the Bible no more than this short account was orig-inally recorded about the Assyrian conquest one single campaign under the As-syrian king Shalmaneser The siege lasted for three years from Hoshearsquos sevenththrough his ninth year (in line with the biblical way of counting years) Accord-ing to the dating Hoshearsquos rule ended when Samaria was conquered and to-gether with it the kingdom of Israel came to its end The conquest was followedby the deportation of the Israelites and by the resettlement of the newly installedAssyrian province

Nothing is said about the reason why the Assyrian king came up against Sa-maria This is what we also observe with the earlier Assyrian campaigns recordedin the Book of Kings For Tiglath-pileserrsquos campaign against king Menahem (2Kgs1519) and his campaign against king Pekah (2Kgs 1529) no reason is given eitherWhereas king Hezekiah of Judah is said to have rebelled against the Assyrianking (2Kgs 187) nothing similar is said of Hoshea The personal fate of theking remains unclear as well The end of the kingdom of Israel coincides withthe conquest of Samaria There is no period without a king And more importantand unfortunately enough there is nothing in the Bible that may help us decidebetween the two Assyrian kings Shalmaneser and Sargon who both claimed tohave conquered Samaria and about the question of whether the city was con-quered one or two times

Verse 24aβγ is a later addition This can be recognized from the doubling ןורמשירעבבשיו ldquohemade (them) dwell in the cities of Samariardquo along with הירעבובשיוןורמש־תאושריו ldquothey took pos-session of Samaria and dwelt in its citiesrdquo The addition emphasizes that the people from Bab-ylon replaced the Israelite inhabitants completely שיינבתחת לאר ldquoinstead of the Israelitesrdquo Thisassertion may be due to anti-Samaritan polemics

264 Christoph Levin

Part V Working with the Book of Kingsthe Chronological Framework

Kristin Weingart

2 Kings 15ndash18 a ChronologicalConundrum

1 Introduction

One of the outstanding features of the Book of Kings is that it not only contains aplethora of chronological data but also applies a distinctive chronological frame-work as a basic structuring device for its presentationsup1 So it is hardly surprisingthat compared with the preceding periods historians of Israel consider them-selves on firmer ground once they reach the monarchic period and that precisechronological tables are usually provided from here onwardssup2 At the same timethe obvious differences between the various chronological tablessup3 demonstratethat the interpretation of the chronological material in Kings remains an ongoing

The ordering principle has long been recognized cf eg Samuel Rolles Driver An Introduc-tion to the Literature of the Old Testament International Theological Library (Edinburgh Clark1891) 179 ldquoIn the arrangement of the reigns of the two series of kings a definite principle is fol-lowed by the compilerWhen the narrative of a reign (in either series) has once been begun it iscontinued to its close hellip when it is ended the reign or reigns of the other series which havesynchronized with it are dealt with the reign overlapping it at the end having been completedthe compiler resumes his narrative of the first series with the reign next following and so onrdquo See eg Herbert Donner Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in GrundzuumlgenTeil 2 Von der Koumlnigszeit bis zu Alexander dem Groszligen mit einem Ausblick auf die Geschichtedes Judentums bis Bar Kochba (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2001) 508 AccordinglyChristian Frevel Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2016) 31 distinguishes between aldquoVorgeschichte Israelsrdquoand a ldquoGeschichte Israelsrdquowhich commences with the monarchic period(10th or rather 9th century BCE) only then does Israel become visible as a state entity and biblicalas well as extra-biblical sources tend to provide more information The examples of Pekah and Hezekiah in three more recent chronological studies by AnttiLaato Guide to Biblical Chronology (Sheffield Phoenix 2015) 113 M Christine Tetley The Re-constructed Chronology of the Divided Kingdom (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2005) 182ndash83and Gershon Galil The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Leiden Brill 1996) Appen-dix A may suffice

Pekah ndash (Laato) ndash (Tetley) ()ndash (Galil)Hezekiah ndash (Laato) ndash (Tetley) ndash (Galil)

Note that Tetley only lists Hezekiahrsquos dates up to the fall of Samaria which according to herreconstruction took place in 719718 BCE

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-013

task in biblical scholarship⁴ The reasons are manifold they lie in the inconsis-tencies of the biblical data their lack of compatibility with external data butfirst and foremost in the fact that reconstructing a chronology remains an equa-tion with several unknowns⁵ Ever since a ground breaking study by Julius Well-hausen⁶ in 1875 the respective weighting and handling of the numerous factorsof uncertainty have resulted in differing reconstructions⁷

The question itself is much older than the onset of historical-critical exegesis attempts to elu-cidate the biblical chronology have accompanied the history of exegesis from its beginningsEarly examples include Josephusrsquos systematizing treatment of the chronology of Kings in his An-tiquitates Judaicae IXf the rabbinic Seder Olam Rabah (SOR critical edition Chaim Joseph Mil-ikowsky Seder Olam A Rabbinic Chronography [Diss Yale University 1981]) which already triesto minimize the surplus in Judean regnal years in comparison to those of the Israelite kings (seeSOR 17 19) or Eusebiusrsquo Chronicon which includes diverging data of the ancient versions into itscalculations Joachim Begrich Die Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda und die Quellen des Rahmensder Koumlnigsbuumlcher (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 1929) 55ndash101 systematically outlined the principalproblems (1) inconsistencies within the chronological data eg conflicting synchronisms orsums of regnal years for Israel and Judah (2) variant numerical data in the ancient versions(3) uncertainties regarding the calendar in ancient Israel eg the date of the New Year (4) un-certainties regarding the counting methods for regnal years ie postdating or antedating and(5) frequent incompatibility with external data ie Assyrian or Babylonian sources which en-able one to date specific events with a greater degree of certainty A sixth point not explicitlylisted by Begrich concerns the occurrence of coregencies and their handling in chronologicalcompilations Julius Wellhausen ldquoDie Zeitrechnung des Buches der Koumlnige seit der Theilung des ReichesrdquoJDT 20 (1875) 607ndash40 While biblical scholars in the late 19th or early 20th centuries like Wellhausen tended to freelyemend the biblical numbers or to combine data from the Masoretic Text (MT) the Greek textualtradition and early historiographers like Josephus in order to reach a consistent reconstruction(so eg Begrich Chronologie) later studies put more trust in the Masoretic Text Prominent ex-amples are Edwin R Thiele The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings a Reconstruction of theChronology of the Kingdoms of Israel und Judah (Exeter Paternoster 1965) who assumes multiplechanges in the method of reckoning as well as frequent co-regencies in order to reconstruct acoherent system On the other hand John Haralson Hayes and Paul K Hooker A New Chronologyfor the Kings of Israel and Judah and Its Implications for Biblical History and Literature (AtlantaGA Knox 1988) work with different calendars in Israel and Judah to compensate for inconsis-tencies At the same time it became increasingly clear that at least parts of the Greek textual tra-dition present separate chronological systems whose relation to the chronology of the MT has tobe determined Eg James Donald Shenkel Chronology and Recensional Development in theGreek Text of Kings (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1968) and Tetley Chronologysee the MT chronology as a secondary adaptation of an older chronological system attestedin the OG (for a critical appraisal of this position see eg Galil Chronology 127ndash44)


What applies to the reconstruction of the chronology of Kings as a wholeis also true for 2Kgs 15ndash 18 Despite the large amount of chronological materialprovided in these chapters the reconstruction of a chronological framework re-mains difficult Here again the biblical data is characterized by a lack of innerconsistency and outward compatibility⁸ The present paper however does notintend to add a further entry to the extensive list of proposals and counter pro-posals on the historic timeline for Israel and Judah It differs from the over-whelming majority of past and present studies on the chronology of Kings

Besides the notorious issues of the sequence of events and the date of the fall of Samariawhich are discussed elsewhere in this volume another problem is the excess of years in the bib-lical chronology compared to external data Menahem is listed in two Assyrian sources as offer-ing tribute to Tiglath-pileser III firstly in a royal stele from Iran (Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptionsof Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Edition with Introductions Translations and Com-mentary [Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1994] 106ndash 107 IIIA 5 =Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC)and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011)no 35 iii 5) and secondly the Calah Annals (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III68ndash69 Ann 13 10 = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser IIIno 14 10 Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 89 Ann 27 2 = Tadmor and YamadaThe Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 32 2) The tribute mentioned in the Calah Annalswas connected by Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 276 with Tiglath-pileserrsquos 8th

palucirc ie 738 BC The list of the Iran stele seems to refer to an earlier tribute probably paidin 740 Tiglath-pileser III also claims to have disposed of Pekah and installed Hoshea as kingin Israel (Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 4 15primendash19prime = Tadmor and YamadaThe Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III no 42 15primendash 19prime cf Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 13 17primendash18prime = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser IIIno 44 17primendash18prime) Hoshea is reported to have brought tribute to Tiglath-pileser III (Tadmor TheInscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Summ 9 rev 9ndash 11 = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscrip-tions of Tiglath-pileser III no 49 rev 9ndash11) The latter probably refers to Tiglath-pileserrsquos 15th

palucirc in 731 BC Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III 277ndash78 cf Galil Chronology 65Therefore the regnal years listed for the Israelite kings after Menahem (Pekahiah 2 yearsPekah 20 years) clearly exceed the 7-year period indicated by the Assyrian material The issueis usually resolved by (a) attributing a shorter reign to Pekah 2 years Begrich Chronologie155 4 years Jeremy Hughes Secrets of the Times Myth and History in Biblical Chronology (Shef-field JSOT Press 1990) 204ndash205 Laato Guide 43ndash48 5 years Galil Chronology 65 (b) byidentifying Pekahiah and Pekah Wellhausen ldquoZeitrechnungrdquo 630ndash31 Julian Reade ldquoMesopo-tamian Guidelines for Biblical Chronologyrdquo SMS 4 (1981) 5 or (c) by assuming a simultaneous(counter‐)kingdom of Pekah beginning in the reign of Jerobeam II Zechariah or Menahem JuliusLewy Die Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda (Gieszligen Alfred Toumlpelmann 1927) 18ndash 19ThieleMysterious Numbers 114 H J Cook ldquoPekahrdquoVT 14 (1974) 121ndash35 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoHis-torical and Chronological Notes on the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the Eight Century BCrdquoVT 36 (1986) 74ndash82 Tetley Chronology 148ndash51 bases her reconstruction here on a variant in G-manuscript 127 and attributes 12 regnal years to Pekahiah


whose aim was programmatically stated by Alfred Jepsen to ldquodevelop a systemwhich respects the tradition and fits in well with the established Assyrian andBabylonian synchronismsrdquo⁹ The combination of both aspects has led to metic-ulous work on the extant sources and brought forth detailed reconstructions butnone of them proved able to prevail among the scholarly community With re-gards to methodology this approach has exerted a high pressure to correct orchange the biblical data in order to reach an acceptable fit The inner systemof the biblical chronology its underlying historical ideas as well as the relationof the chronological data to the narrative material in Kings tended to be over-looked in the processsup1⁰ For this reason the present study focuses on the chro-nological data within 2Kgs 15ndash 18 on their own right and intends to elucidatethe chronological concept conveyed and the ways and means of its compilationThis will be done initially irrespective of the extra-biblical data for the historicalperiod in question Whether the biblical chronology and the extra biblical datacan be reconciled or whether the expectation that they could is even justifiedis a different matter ndash and outside the scope of this paper A thorough under-standing of the biblical chronology and its development however is a necessaryprerequisite for its use in any historical reconstruction It may help to differenti-ate between reliable data and numbers obtained by the redactor(s) through somecalculation method (which is the main focus of the present paper) and can pro-vide insights into the nature of the sources behind the synchronistic compilationas well as its underlying pragmaticssup1sup1

2 Chronological Consistency and Inconsistencyin 2Kgs 15ndash18

2Kgs 15ndash18 describe the last era of the Northern kingdom of Israel and the con-temporaneous history of Judah After the long reign of Jeroboam II there are six

Alfred Jepsen ldquoZur Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda Eine Uumlberpruumlfungrdquo in Unter-suchungen zur israelitisch-juumldischen Chronologie ed Alfred Jepsen and Robert Hanhart (BerlinToepelmann 1964) 6 A notable exception is Laato Guide who divides his study into three steps (1) an explana-tion of the biblical traditions (2) a presentation of the extrabiblical material and (3) a demonstra-tion of ldquohow the biblical and ancient Jewish chronological traditions can be harmonized withextra-biblical materialrdquo (Laato Guide 2ndash3) For a discussion of these broader questions see Kristin Weingart Gezaumlhlte Geschichte Diesynchronistischen Datierungen in den Koumlnigebuumlchern in literargeschichtlicher und historischer Per-spektive (forthcoming)


more Israelite kings four of whom rule in parallel to the exceedingly long term ofAzariah (Zechariah Shallum Menahem and Pekahiah) They are followed byPekah and Hoshea At the same time four Judean kings are listed followingAzariah these are Jotham Ahaz and Hezekiah The table in Fig 1 shows thechronological data provided in 2Kgs 15ndash18

Some of these data show a high degree of consistency This is the case in theregnal year totals and synchronistic accession dates for the kings of Israel fromZechariah to Pekah (2Kgs 151 8 13 23 27)With the sole exception of Menahemthe reign lengths given fit the intervals indicated by the synchronisms At thesame time it is evident that an accession year system (postdating) is appliedin order to establish the total number of regnal years of each king

The case of Pekahiah can serve as an example His reign parallels the 50th51st and 52nd year of Azariah Therefore he ascended to the throne some time inthe 50th year of Azariah which is treated as his accession year and not yet count-ed as a regnal year The 51st and 52nd year of Azariah are attributed to him as reg-nal years the sum of which adds up to two As usual in cases of postdating asubtraction of the synchronisms equals the regnal years given

For a case of the alternative counting method ie antedating see Nadab in1Kgs 1525 33 His reign starts in the 2nd year of Asa while his successor Baashaascended to the throne in the 3rd year of Asa However he is also attributed atwo-year-long reign This implies that the year of his accession though shared

Fig 1 Table illustrating the chronological data provided in 2Kgs 15ndash18 Prepared by the author


with Jeroboam I is counted as a full regnal year as well In the case of antedatingthe subtraction of the synchronisms is always one year short in comparison withthe number of regnal years listed

The synchronistic date for Hezekiahrsquos accession and the subsequent paralle-lization of dates for the conquest of Samaria between Hezekiah and Hoshea(2Kgs 176 181 9 f) are consistent as well As in the case of the Israelite kingspostdating is also applied for the determination of Hezekiahrsquos reign lengthsup1sup2

Despite these cases of chronological coherence the overall compilation dis-plays an apparent lack of consistency conflicts and conspicuities are discerniblein no less than seven instances

(1) The sum of regnal years attributed to the Israelite kings after Jeroboam IIis 41 years and 7 months The reign lengths of the Judean kings in the same pe-riod add up to 53 yearssup1sup3

(2) Menahem is listed with 10 regnal years (2Kgs 1517) but the synchronisticdates of his accession (39th year of Azariah) and that of his successor Pekahiah(2Kgs 1523 50th year of Azariah) imply an 11-year reign

(3) For the accession of Hoshea two synchronistic dates are extant neitherof which easily agrees with the data for the Judean kings‒ 2Kgs 1530 synchronizes the beginning of his reign with the 20th year of Jo-

tham However according to 2Kgs 1532 Jotham only reigned for 16 yearsso there should not be a 20th year of Jotham

‒ 2Kgs 171 dates his accession to the 12th year of Ahaz However if Ahazreigned for 16 years and his successor Hezekiah came to the throne in the3rd year of Hoshea then Hoshearsquos accession should fall into the 13th yearof Ahazrsquo reign(4) Jothamrsquos regnal year total and accession date (2Kgs 1532) in combination

with the synchronistic date for his successor Ahaz (2Kgs 161) seem to indicateantedating since the synchronistic dates imply a 15-year reign for Jotham anda regnal year total of 16 years is attributed to him This differs from Hezekiah

Hezekiahrsquos 4th year can only parallel Hoshearsquos 7th year if the initial period of Hezekiahrsquosreign which falls into Hoshearsquos 3rd year is treated as an accession year His 1st regnal year cor-responds to Hoshearsquos 4th year and accordingly Hezekiahrsquos 4th year coincides with Hoshearsquos 7th

year For the Israelite kings the numbers are Zechariah 6 months Shallum 1 month Menahem10 years Pekahiah 2 years Pekah 20 years and Hoshea 9 years For the Judean kings thesame period is marked by the synchronistic dates for Zechariahrsquos accession (38th year of Azariah)and Hoshearsquos 9th year (= 7th year of Hezekiah) Therefore the sum includes 14 years for Azariah 16years each for Jotham and Ahaz and 7 years for Hezekiah Assuming antedating for the reigns ofthe Judean kings and postdating for the Israelite ones would only reduce the difference in thetotals


whose data clearly indicate that postdating was used to determine the number ofhis regnal yearssup1⁴

(5) The synchronistic date for Jothamrsquos accession ie the 2nd year of Pekah(2Kgs 1532) is conspicuous According to 2Kgs 1527 Pekahrsquos reign began inthe 52nd year of Azariah which is also the latterrsquos last year If Jotham had suc-ceeded Azariah directly his rule should have commenced in the 2nd year of Pe-kahiah (which would coincide with the accession year of Pekah) This howeverwould render the subsequent synchronistic dates impossible esp the one forAhaz (2Kgs 161 17th year of Pekah) The present data seem to indicate an inter-regnum of 1ndash2 years between the end of Azariahrsquos reign and the beginning ofJothamrsquossup1⁵

(6) The synchronistic dates for the accession of Ahaz (2Kgs 161) and Heze-kiah (2Kgs 181) are incompatible with the number of regnal years attributed toAhaz Between the 17th year of Pekah and the 3rd year of Hoshea there is onlyroom for 6 years not 16

(7) The issue of Ahazrsquos age has been a long noted crux If Ahaz ascended tothe throne at the age of 20 and ruled for 16 years (2Kgs 161) he would have been36 when Hezekiah took over Hezekiah however is said to have been 25 yearsold at the beginning of his reign (2Kgs 181) So Ahaz can only have been an11-year old boy when Hezekiah was bornWhile this might be possible from a bi-ological point of view it is improbable and would remain a notable exceptionamong the Judean kings who are usually around 20 years old when the heir tothe throne is bornsup1⁶

The remarkable density of chronological problems within 2Kgs 15ndash 18 hasyielded an even greater abundance of attempts to explain themsup1⁷ These are in-evitably connected with more comprehensive propositions regarding the compi-lation history of the chronological data in the Book of Kings and the system be-hind it as well as the literary history and pragmatics of the regnal frame as its

See above note 12 Cf Thiele Mysterious Numbers 110ndash 11 See the lists provided by Begrich Chronologie 164 although some of his corrections are un-necessary Azariah is another notable exception according to the data provided in 2Kgs 152 33he was at the age of 43 when Jotham was born Only a small selection of proposals can be mentioned or even reviewed in the presentcontext the more so as most of them necessarily go hand in hand with more general presuppo-sitions on the development and organization principles of the synchronistic chronology inKings For collections of recent proposals see Robb Andrew Young Hezekiah in History and Tra-dition (Leiden Brill 2012) 9ndash34 or Raik Heckl ldquoHiskiardquo wibilex 2012 (httpswwwbibelwissenschaftdestichwort21346 accessed 102017)


text basesup1⁸ on the one hand and the overall aim to achieve a compatibility of thebiblical data with the external sources on the other

Though not dealing with the latter issue the propositions outlined in thispaper depend on a more general understanding of the synchronistic chronologyas a whole (see below) They will address two questions which individual com-ponents of the overall conundrum within 2Kgs 15ndash18 are interconnected andhow the current contradictory picture might have come about

In contrast to the data for other periods the textual witnesses for 2Kgs 15ndash 18offer only a very limited number of variants Most of them originate from differ-ing chronological concepts or from attempts to harmonize or minimize inconsis-tencies within the given materialsup1⁹

An example of the former is the Greek manuscript 127sup2⁰ belonging to a fam-ily of manuscripts which attest the Antiochene text which has a unique andsystematic reworking of the whole synchronistic chronology in Kingssup2sup1 For thelatter two examples may suffice (1) According to the 12th cent minuscule 245Menahem reigned for 20 years The synchronistic dates are adjusted accordinglyShallumrsquos reign and the beginning of Menahemrsquos reign fall into the 30th year ofAzariah in order to accommodate the date of Pekahiahrsquos accession (50th year of

For the latter see the recent study by Benjamin D Thomas Hezekiah and the CompositionalHistory of the Book of Kings (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2014) which also provides an overview ofthe older discussion Text critical examinations of the chronological data inevitably face a methodological prob-lem in order to determine whether a given variant resembles a correction deviation or other-wise motivated change the underlying chronological system must be understood On theother hand proposals on the design of the underlying system depend on the data that the as-sumed system is supposed to include Thus the danger of arguing within a hermeneutic circle isever present The nomenclature follows Alfred Rahlfs Verzeichnis der griechischen Handschriften des AltenTestaments (Berlin Weidmann 1914) See Shenkel Chronology 27ndash31 Tetley Chronology nevertheless bases parts of her chrono-logical reconstruction on 127 because she believes it still contains a number of old ie prae-MTregnal year totals and synchronisms (63) 127 has the following variant regnal year totals in 2Kgs15ndash 18 Menahem 20 years Pekahiah 12 years and Pekah 30 years The synchronistic dates are

Zechariah th year of Azariah Jotham

nd year of PekahShallum

th year of Azariah Ahaz th year of Pekah

Menahem th year of Azariah Hezekiah

th year of HosheaPekahiah

th year of AzariahPekah

th year of AzariahHoshea

th year of Ahaz


Azariah)sup2sup2 The beginning of Hezekiahrsquos reign is dated to the 5th year of Hosheathus avoiding a contradiction with Hoshearsquos accession date (12th year of Ahaz)and the length of Ahazrsquo reign (16 years) (2) Codex Alexandrinus the Antiochenemanuscripts 19 82 93 and 108 as well as the minuscules 158 and 700 indicate aregnal year total of 10 years for Pekahiah This reading is arguably a correctionresulting from another attempt to harmonize the accession year of Pekahiah (50th

year of Azariah) the regnal year total of Ahaz (16 years) and the accession dateof Hoshea (12th year of Ahaz)sup2sup3

3 The Chronological Concept of theSynchronistic Framework in 2Kgs 15ndash 18

The following observations are based on the proposition (to be defended below)that the synchronistic chronology in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 was compiled on the basis oftwo sets of numbers (1) a compilation of regnal year totals and synchronistic ac-cession dates for the kings of Israel and (2) a collection of regnal year totals forthe kings of Judah The synchronistic dates for the accession of the Judean kingswere calculated by combining Judean regnal year totals and Israelite accessiondates In this respect 2Kgs 15ndash 18 is consistent with other parts of the synchron-istic chronology in Kings The chronological compilation is best explained as aseries of consecutive combinations interlacing the two sets of numbers eachcombination being internally coherent but limited in rangesup2⁴

As noted in the beginning the chronological data for the Israelite kings iethe combination of regnal year totals and accession dates are perfectly consistentndash with the sole exception of Menahem (Fig 2)

Menahemrsquos case is peculiar because the synchronistic dates indicate a reignof 11 years but 2Kgs 1517 attributes only 10 regnal years to him This combina-tion is not compatible with antedating because Menahemrsquos regnal years would

Minuscule 245 shows an analogous tendency to avoid contradictions in other parts of thesynchronistic chronology as well such as the chronological data on Omri (1Kgs 1623) Joram(2Kgs 118a) or Azariah (2Kgs 151) The other attested variants are (1) Regnal year totals 2Kgs 1513 Shallum 8 days (A) 2Kgs1523 Pekahiah 10 years (A 19 82 93 108 158 700) 12 years (V 52 107 489 et al) 2Kgs1527 Pekah 28 years (55 56 119 372 554) 2Kgs 181 Hezekiah 25 years (130) (2) Synchronisticdates 2Kgs 158 Zechariah 28th year of Azariah (V 92 106 120 130 134 314 489 554) 2Kgs 1527Pekah 62nd year of Azariah (489) 2Kgs 1532 Jotham 13th year of Pekah (71) 2Kgs 171 Hoshea 10th

year of Ahaz (82) For the variants in manuscripts 127 and 245 see above For a detailed discussion and justification see Weingart Gezaumlhlte Geschichte


then amount to 12 Assuming postdating was used a total of 11 regnal yearswould be expected so the figure is still off by one year The textual witnessesunanimously support the MT in this case so to assume a mistake would besheer conjecture The synchronistic dates on the other hand are completelyin line with the neighboring synchronisms for Zechariah and Shallum as wellas Pekah changing them would cause a series of new problems and is equallyunfounded

This curious number of regnal years for Menahem coincides however withthe fact that the combination of reign lengths and accession dates for earlier Is-raelite kings point to antedating when counting their regnal yearssup2⁵ while thedata for the later kings (like Pekahiah) indicate postdating It has been suggestedby Gershon Galil that Menahemrsquos data reflect a change from ante- to postdatingprompted by the adoption of the Assyrian custom of differentiating between theaccession year of a king and the first regnal year starting with the first New Year

Fig 2 Diagram showing the chronological data for the kings of Israel provided in 2Kgs 15ndash18Prepared by the author

Ahaziah is the last Israelite king before Menahem with a complete and well attested set ofdates Here the interplay of synchronistic accession date and regnal year total for Ahaziah (1Kgs2252) and synchronistic accession date for Joram (2Kgs 31) imply antedating There is no regularintroductory formula and accession date for Jehu therefore the method of reckoning for Joramand Jehu remains unclear The number of regnal years for Joash also presupposes antedating ifone reads with greater parts of the G-tradition the synchronism ldquo39th year of Jehoashrdquo in 2Kgs1310 The MT has in 2Kgs 1310 the synchronism ldquo37th year of Jehoashrdquo which conflicts withthe neighboring synchronistic dates in 2Kgs 131 and 141 The MT-reading seems to result froman attempt to reconcile the date with the accession date of Jehoash (2Kgs 122 ldquo7th year ofJehurdquo) There is no trace of a corresponding change in 2Kgs 131 which should read ldquo21st yearof Jehoashrdquo if the MT were correct


in the kingrsquos reignsup2⁶ The narrative material on Menahem corroborates the sug-gestion 2Kgs 159 f not only mentions the exceedingly high tribute of 1000 tal-ents of silver which Menahem paid but also reports the introduction of a taxationsystem in order to collect the necessary means Following the Assyrian systemwith regard to the reckoning of regnal years could well have coincided with an-other change discernible in various texts whose exact date is hard to determine ndashthe change of the New Year in Israel from autumn to spring

Since the issue has been extensively discussedsup2⁷ a short outline of its mainfeatures may suffice The Gezer calendar as well as the traditions reflected in thevarious festival calendars in the Pentateuch (Ex 2314ndash 19 3418ndash26 Lev 231ndash14Deut 161ndash7) although the texts themselves are mostly younger indicate that inearlier pre-exilic times the year began in the autumnsup2⁸ Whenever the monthsare numbered however the first month seems to lie in the spring (see egEx 122 Jer 362) Together with the use of Babylonian month names this attestsan adaptation of Assyrian andor Babylonian calendars While it is clear (cfmRHSh 11) that in later postexilic times the New Year was transferred back tothe autumn the question remains when the interlude of a vernal New Yearstarted With regards to Judah the change is often associated with Josiahsup2⁹ orthe Babylonian exilesup3⁰ For Israel the data is even sparser Therefore some

Galil Chronology 62 For Galil however the change took place already during the reign ofJoash Galil is correct in pointing out that Menahem is not the first Israelite king mentionedin Assyrian sources as paying tribute At least Jehu (cf Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian Rulersof the Early First Millennium BC II (858ndash754 BC) [Toronto Toronto University Press 1996]A010288) and Joash (cf Grayson Assyrian Rulers A01047 8) were also Assyrian vassals Un-like the case of Menahem the OT does not indicate any influence on Israelite administrative mat-ters and the chronological data do not indicate an earlier change from ante- to postdating For an overview and further references see eg Karl Jaroš ldquoKalenderrdquo in Neues Bibellexikonvol 2 ed Manfred Goumlrg (1995) 429ndash32 James CVanderKam ldquoCalendars Ancient Israelite andEarly Jewishrdquo in The Anchor Bible Dictionary vol 1 ed David Noel Freedman (1992) 813ndash20 aswell as the discussions in Begrich Chronologie 66ndash90 Thiele Mysterious Numbers 29ndash33 JackFinegan Handbook of Biblical Chronology Principles of Time Reckoning in the Ancient World andProblems of Chronology in the Bible (Peabody MA Hendrickson 1998) 29ndash35 76ndash80 LaatoGuide 14ndash16 According to Lev 258ndash9 sabbatical years and jubilees also begin in the autumn althoughthe text mentions the ldquoseventh monthrdquo implying that the first month is in the spring ThieleMysterious Numbers 30ndash2 and Laato Guide 14ndash 15 also point to 1Kgs 637ndash8 and 2Kgs 23for additional support of an autumnal turn of the year for the latter see already Begrich Chro-nologie 68ndash69 Begrich Chronologie 70ndash90 cf Hayes and Hooker New Chronology 13 So eg Laato Guide 15 asserting a change coinciding with Jeconiahrsquos exile and a transitionperiod of parallel chronological systems up to Zedekiah Thiele Mysterious Numbers 33 as-


scholars deny a shift in the chronological system altogether and assert either anautumnal yearsup3sup1 or vernal year for Northern Israelrsquos monarchic period as a wholeIf a change of systems and New Year date is accepted however it is usually con-nected to Assyrian influence and dated into the 8th century BCEsup3sup2 In this casethe chronological data for Menahem would offer a valuable clue

A shift of the New Year from fall to spring in Israel while the autumn datestill remained unchanged in Judah could well explain why Menahem was onlyattributed 10 regnal years although the synchronistic dates indicate an 11-yearperiod in Judah

If these assumptions are correct they allow some conclusions regarding thenature of the material in which the chronological data for the Israelite kings wastransmitted and which was used by the compiler of the synchronistic frameworkA change of reckoning method and New Year date at a certain point with conse-quences for the interplay of regnal year totals and synchronisms does not pointto a systematic (and potentially artificial) construction but rather to continuallykept records which reflect and incorporate such changes when they occur Thiswould add weight to the view that older official records like king lists andorchronicles constitute the basis of (or at least parts of) the chronological datain the Book of Kingssup3sup3 In contrast to the common view that these documentsonly contained regnal year totals the correspondence between these totalsand the synchronistic dates strongly suggests that such an older document deal-ing with the kings of Israel already included synchronistic accession datessup3⁴

At least at the time the Israelite data was combined with the Judean materialthe synchronistic accession dates of the Israelite kings must have been presentfor the combination with the Judean data obviously presupposes them The reg-nal year totals for the Judean kings of this period amount to 52 years for Azariah

sumes a consistent adherence to an autumnal year in Judah for the whole monarchic periodGalil Chronology 9ndash10 on the other hand reckons with a vernal year for the same period So eg Galil Chronology 9 Cf Hayes and Hooker New Chronology 13 who additionallyargue for differing autumnal New Year dates in Israel and Judah Jaroš ldquoKalenderrdquo 431 While many researchers would probably ascribe to this general proposition ndash see eg theinfluential study by Shoshana Bin-Nun ldquoFormulas from Royal Records of Israel and ofJudahrdquo VT 18 (1968) 414ndash32 or Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Temple Library of Jerusalem and theComposition of the Book of Kingsrdquo in Congress Volume Leiden 2004 ed Andreacute Lemaire (LeidenBrill 2006) 129ndash52 ndash the form and content of these sources as well as the questions how and atwhat stage they reached the author(s) of the Book of Kings remain highly controversial cf therecent overview in Thomas Hezekiah 84ndash 102 Bin-Nun ldquoFormulasrdquo 426 allowed for the possibility that the synchronistic dates for the ac-cession of Ahab Ahaziah Joram and Jehoshaphat were already present in the older king lists


(2Kgs 151) 16 years for Jotham (1532) 16 years for Ahaz (2Kgs 161) and 29 yearsfor Hezekiah (2Kgs 181) According to 2Kgs 189 f the first 6 regnal years of He-zekiah parallel the last 6 years of Hoshea Using the synchronism of Hezekiahrsquosaccession and the subsequent chronological alignment of the fall of Samaria asan anchor the combination shown in Fig 3 emerges

It becomes immediately apparent that Ahazrsquos reign length is not compatiblewith the synchronistic dates for his and Hezekiahrsquos accession In addition thetotal of 16 years for Ahaz also pushes the beginning of Jothamrsquos reign wellback into the time of Menahem and thus conflicts with the formerrsquos synchroni-zation with Pekah (2Kgs 1532) The synchronistic dates rather imply a reignlength of only 6 years for Ahazsup3⁵ Assuming that an older number of 6 yearswas accidentally changed to 16 ndash possibly influenced by the regnal year totalof Jotham (16 years) just a few verses earlier (1533) ndash most of the neighboringsynchronisms ndash Israelite as well as Judean ndash fall nicely into place (Fig 4)

Fig 3 Diagram showing the combined chronological data for Israel and Judah provided in 2Kgs15ndash18 Prepared by the author

There is no textual witness for this date but as Claus Schedl ldquoTextkritische Bemerkungen zuden Synchronismen der Koumlnige von Israel und JudardquoVT 12 (1962) 88ndash 119 already pointed outa change of 10 years is a rather frequent phenomenon within the chronological material Such achange appears in Kings besides Chronicles (cf 1Kgs 16682Chr 161 2Kgs 2482Chr 369) oramong the textual witnesses (cf 1Kgs 152 Codex B ldquo6 years he reigned in Jerusalemrdquo CodexA and minuscules 52 92 247 121 ldquo16 years he reigned in Jerusalemrdquo 1Kgs 1525 MT ldquo2nd year ofAsardquo Greek minuscule 501 ldquo12th year of Asardquo 2Kgs 158 MT ldquo38th year of Azariahrdquo Codex Vand minuscules 92 106 120 127 130 134 314 489 554 ldquo28th year of Azariahrdquo 2Kgs 1527 MT ldquo52nd

year of Azariahrdquo minuscule 489 ldquo62nd year of Azariahrdquo)


Only the synchronistic date for the accession of Hoshea (2Kgs 171) the 12th

year of Ahaz does not agree with this combination One would expect the 2nd

or 3rd year of Ahaz depending on the exact date of his accession in the courseof the year and its relation to the Judean New Year

The synchronistic date for Jothamrsquos accession the 2nd year of Pekah impliesthat an accession year is not taken into account in his case Moreover the currentcombination results in a gap between the 52nd year of Azariah and the beginningof Jothamrsquos rule As it seems the regnal year totals with which the compiler hadto work did not add up to the number of years required to cover the stretch oftime indicated by the Israelite data

The lack of an accession year points to a possible justification for this unusu-al combination in the eyes of the compilersup3⁶ in the chronological data for theJudean kings there are only two instances of documented co-regencies or over-lapping reigns ndash Jehoshaphat and Jehoram (2Kgs 816) and Amaziah and Azariah(2Kgs 1422) In the former case a short note in the regnal frame indicates thatJehoshaphat was still king when Jehoram began to reign ( ןבםרוילשמחתנשבו

הדוהיךלמטפשוהיןבםרוהיךלמהדוהיךלמטפשוהיולארשיךלמבאחא )sup3⁷ In the latter

Fig 4 Diagram showing the combined chronological data with a corrected regnal year total forAhaz Prepared by the author

An alternative explanation would be an isolated instance of antedating Considering the con-sistent use of postdating in the chronological data for the Judean kings such a change would behard to explain Many commentators see הדוהיךלמתפשוהיו as a gloss secondarily inserted into the text anddisturbing the usual sequence of the introductory formula (see eg Otto Thenius Die Buumlcherder Koumlnige KEH [Leipzig Hirzel 1873] 312 Wellhausen ldquoZeitrechnungrdquo 616 Shenkel Chronol-ogy 73 Georg Hentschel 2 Koumlnige NEB [Wuumlrzburg Echter Verlag 1985] 37 Volkmar Fritz Das


the narrative in 2Kgs 1419ndash22 reports the circumstances of Amaziahrsquos dismissaland Azariahrsquos accession while 1422 seems to imply that there was a period inAzariahrsquos reign which lay in the lifetime of his predecessor Amaziah In bothcases the interplay of synchronistic dates and regnal year totals shows thatno accession year is included the beginning of the kingrsquos reign rather coincideswith the first year counted as a regnal yearsup3⁸

In the case at hand the narrative description of the end of Azariahrsquos reignprovided the compiler with a suitable explanation for the chronological gap in-dicated in his final years Azariah suffered from a disease which impeded himfrom ruling so Jotham functioned as an interim ruler (2Kgs 155 לעךלמהןבםתויו

ץראהםעתאטפשתיבה ) The result was a chronological concept which showedsome peculiarities but remained within the reasonable and justifiable boundsprovided by the narrative material on the kings of Judah

In sum the synchronistic chronology in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 can be explained as acombination of data on the Israelite kings (regnal year totals and synchronisticaccession dates) with regnal year totals for the Judean kings It displays an ap-plication of certain compilation techniques (no accession year in case of co-re-genciessup3⁹) and methods of reckoning regnal years (postdating for Judah and a

zweite Buch der Koumlnige ZBKAT [Zuumlrich TVZ 1998] 43) The words are also missing in some tex-tual witnesses (GNmin Syh SVMss) prompting the apparatus of the BHS to suggest their deletion816 obviously deviates from the usual regnal frame but this marks the phrase rather as a lectiodifficilior probabilior a secondary adjustment to the regular formula is much more plausiblethan a later addition (Juumlrgen Werlitz Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige [Stuttgart Katholisches Bibelwerk2002] 234 cf Burke O Long 2 Kings [Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1991] 108) Besides it is hardto explain what information the assumed gloss הדוהיךלמתפשוהיו should have conveyed ThatJehoshaphat was king of Judah is implied by the filiation in v 16b However if the phrase indi-cates a coregency it has a recognizable function within the introductory formula and one doesnot have to assume a gloss or an interpolation Jehoramrsquos accession is dated to the 5th year of Joram (2Kgs 816) the reign of his successorAhaziah begins in the 12th year of Joram (2Kgs 825) Since Jehoram is said to have reigned for8 years (817) no accession year is attributed to him The case of Azariah is more complicatedThe original date of his accession is probably the 17th year of Jeroboam (the number 27 seems tobe another instance of a change of 10 see above note 35) The compiler probably understood theevents related in 2Kgs 1419ndash22 as a period in which the kingship was in dispute and assumed atemporary co-regency between Amaziah and Azariah (cf Thiele Mysterious Numbers GalilChronology 57ndash59) Accordingly Azariahrsquos term does not begin in the 16th year of Jeroboam ndashas would be expected if there had been an accession year ndash but it is dated to the 17th year ofJeroboam Co-regencies or overlapping reigns are always indicated within the regnal frame itself or inthe narrative material included for the respective kings (see below) In order to understand thechronological concept of the synchronistic framework of Kings on its own right there is no needto postulate a greater number of co-regencies than indicated even though the assumption often


reasonable change from antedating to postdating with Menahem for Israel⁴⁰)that is consistent with the compilation of data for other periods of the synchron-istic chronology The compilation itself further suggests a familiarity with narra-tive material fixed in between the introductory and closing formulae of the reg-nal frames⁴sup1

4 A Glimpse Behind the SynchronisticFramework

So far it has been shown that the chronological data in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 are no arbi-trary collection of figures but bear witness to a thoughtfully designed synchron-istic chronology which builds upon different materials and reflects a certain ideaof the chronological sequence of the last five decades in the period of the dividedkingdoms Some of the discrepancies noted above have proven to be mere appa-rent ones once the compilation techniques were better understood Other phe-nomena within the chronological data have not been addressed yet They coin-cide with notable peculiarities in the narrative material within 2Kgs 15 f as well

functions as an effective means to reconcile the biblical chronology with external data ThieleMysterious Numbers 61ndash65 eg presupposes seven cases of co-regency in his chronological re-construction six in Judah and one in Israel (see also Edwin R Thiele ldquoCoregencies and Over-lapping Reigns among the Hebrew Kingsrdquo JBL 93 [1974] 174ndash200) Leslie McFall ldquoSome MissingCoregencies in Thielersquos Chronologyrdquo AUSS 30 (1992) 35ndash58 wants to add another four For amethodological critique see Laato Guide 19ndash22 There is no need to assume frequent and basically unmotivated changes in the praxis of reg-nal year reckoning in Israel and Judah as Thiele Mysterious Numbers proposes According toThiele Judah changed from postdating (Rehoboam ndash Jehoshaphat) to antedating (Jehoram ndash Je-hoash) and back to postdating (Amaziah ndash Zedekiah) Israel changed from antedating to post-dating at the time of Joash (see the table p 281ndash82) This of course does not imply that all the material contained in the Book of Kings was al-ready present quite the contrary many of the prophetic stories are in all likelihood later addi-tions cf eg Hermann-Josef Stipp Elischa ndash Propheten ndash Gottesmaumlnner Die Kompositionsge-schichte des Elischazyklus und verwandter Texte rekonstruiert auf der Basis von Text- undLiterarkritik zu 1 Koumln 2022 und 2 Koumln 2ndash7 (St Ottilien EOS Verlag 1987) 253ndash67 361ndash62 StevenL McKenzie The Trouble with Kings The Composition of the Book of Kings in the DeuteronomisticHistory (Leiden Brill 1991) 88ndash93 Hermann-Josef Stipp ldquoAhabs Buszlige und die Kompositiondes deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerksrdquo Bib 76 (1995) 471ndash97 Erhard Blum ldquoDie Nabotuuml-berlieferungen und die Kompositionsgeschichte der Vorderen Prophetenrdquo in Schriftauslegungin der Schrift Festschrift fuumlr Odil Hannes Steck ed Reinhard G Kratz Thomas Kruumlger and Kon-rad Schmid (Berlin de Gruyter 2000) 111ndash28 or Susanne Otto ldquoThe Composition of the Elijah-Elisha Stories and the Deuteronomistic Historyrdquo JSOT 27 (2003) 487ndash508


as components of the regnal frame and offer further insights into the develop-ment of the chronological concept found in the text

One such notable feature is the double synchronism for the accession ofHoshea 2Kgs 1530 synchronizes the beginning of his reign with the 20th yearof Jotham 171 with the 12th year of Ahaz As seen before the first synchronismdoes not agree with Jothamrsquos regnal year total of 16 years If the proposedreign length of 6 years for Ahaz is correct the second synchronism is impossibleas well It remains striking however that Hoshearsquos accession is synchronizedwith Jotham as well as with Ahaz

Another peculiarity concerns the account of Jothamrsquos reign in 2Kgs 15 Be-yond the formulaic components usually given for any king only two particularsof Jothamrsquos reignwhich is after all 16 years long are mentioned (a) constructionmeasures undertaken on a temple gate (1535b ןוילעההוהיתיברעשתאהנבאוה )and (b) the beginning of Aramean and North Israelite hostilities against Judah(1537 והילמרןבחקפתאוםראךלמןיצרהדוהיבחילשהלהוהילחהםההםימיב ) Thesame two issues recur in the account of Ahazrsquos reign albeit in much more detail2Kgs 165ndash9 relate the joined effort of Rezin and Pekah to force Ahaz into ananti-Assyrian coalition and the latterrsquos loyalty to the Assyrian king vv 10ndash 18 de-scribe various building measures at the Jerusalem temple first and foremost theerection of an altar based on a model in Damascus (an undertaking presented ina highly critical angle within the Book of Kings) Compared to Ahaz Jothamrsquos de-piction appears like an abridged and softened version of his highly problematicsuccessor Jothamrsquos fields of activity are the same he acts in a completely innoc-uous way but the information given remains completely vague as well

A third points concerns elements of the regnal frame esp the introductoryformulae for Jotham and Ahaz The evaluation of Jotham (2Kgs 153435a) con-tains nothing extraordinary It resembles the frequent type of assessment for Ju-dean kings that is positive to a limited extend and links the cultic policies of aking to those of his father⁴sup2 Ahaz on the other hand receives an unusually ex-tensive and highly negative evaluation (2Kgs 162bndash4) which connects him withthe kings of Israel and in the account of his sins with the later Manasseh (2Kgs163 cf 2Kgs 216)⁴sup3 This evaluation is in line with the critical tendency of theaccount as a whole

The other examples are Asa 1Kgs 1511 ff Jehoshaphat 1Kgs 2243 f Joash 2Kgs 123 f Amaziah2Kgs 143 f Azariah 2Kgs 153 f Cf Hans-Detlef Hoffmann Reform und Reformen Untersuchungen zu einem Grundthema derdeuteronomistischen Geschichtsschreibung (Zuumlrich TVZ 1980) 39ndash40 Sang-Won Lee ldquoDen Ortden JHWH erwaumlhlen wird hellip sollt ihr aufsuchenrdquo (Dtn 125) Die Forderung der Kulteinheit im Deu-teronomistischen Geschichtswerk (Diss Universitaumlt Tuumlbingen 2015) 93


On the other hand the biographical information provided for Ahaz in theintroductory formula is incomplete While Jothamrsquos formula contains the usualinformation (synchronistic date of accession age at accession regnal yeartotal residency the kingrsquos mother) Ahazrsquo introduction lacks any informationon his mother This is striking because all other introductory formulae for thekings of Judah (with the sole exception of Jehoram 2Kgs 816ndash 17 ⁴⁴) mentionthe kingrsquos mother ie her name as well as her origin andor patronym More-over Ahazrsquos age at his accession 20 years is the only round number amongall the Judean kings mentioned in the synchronistic account This might justbe a coincidence but could also hint at an artificial construction like theround numbers in the regnal year totals of David (2Sam 54) and Solomon(1Kgs 1142)

The following chart summarizes the textual phenomena described above

Jotham Ahazbiographical information complete specific incomplete genericevaluation generic specificnarrative account condensed

specific amp duplicatedetailed specific

The fact that among the two kings there is only one complete and specific set ofbiographical information and that the narrative account of Jotham comprisesmerely two notes both of which double and soften up the information givenfor Ahaz allow some insight into the content of the sources underlying the ac-count in the Book of Kings and the methods and contributions of its compiler Itseems that the compiler worked with a certain set of information which he triedto adjust and to complete according to the requirements of the establishedframework Assuming that contents of a specific nature point to data derivedfrom source material the latter might have included‒ The two names Jotham and Ahaz‒ Two figures for regnal years 16 years and 6 years⁴⁵‒ Possibly one figure for the age at accession‒ Data on one royal mother and‒ One account of the deeds of the king and the events during his reign

Here however information on another woman is provided the kingrsquos wife a daughter ofAhab (v 18) Regarding the possibility that Ahaz might have reigned 6 years instead of 16 see abovep 279


Presenting Jotham and Ahaz as two successive kings the compiler had to recon-struct what was missing‒ A second set of biographical information (age and the kingrsquos mother) Here

he used the material now provided for Jotham and constructed an introduc-tory formula for Ahaz leaving out the name of his mother because the re-quired information was lacking and (possibly) creating a round numberfor the kingrsquos age at the beginning of his reign

‒ A second account of the kingrsquos reign Here he used the extensive materialnow found for Ahaz and attributed similar activities and events to Jothamwhile depicting him as a less problematic king

This led to a critical evaluation being provided for Ahaz while Jotham receivedthe default evaluation of Judean kings who were not particularly bad but didnot distinguish themselves as cult reformers either The result was a rather color-less picture of Jotham and an artificially construed biographical frame for AhazHowever regardless of whether it was constructed to this aim or not it helped tobridge Pekahrsquos long reign of 20 years in the chronology ndash or at least a greater partof it for two years remained unaccounted for⁴⁶

If this reconstruction of the source material is correct it invites further spec-ulation Could it be that the information found there did not concern two consec-utive kings but in fact only one king for whom two different names were includ-ed⁴⁷ The fact that a king could bear multiple names is hardly surprising inancient Near Eastern contexts as is well known from the numerous attestationsof throne names in Egypt and Mesopotamia There are at least some indicationsthat attributing a new name to the king at the beginning of his reign was alsopracticed in Judah⁴⁸ Remarkably there are also two names for Jothamrsquos prede-

See above section 2 inconsistency (5) This was already proposed by Knut Tage Andersen ldquoNoch einmal die Chronologie der Kouml-nige von Israel und JudardquoSJOT 2 (1989) 1ndash45 who argued that Jotham and Ahaz are to be iden-tified and that there was only one Judean king between Azariah and Hezekiah ldquoSoviel ich sehekann aus diesem Zusammenfall nur die eine Schluszligfolgerung gezogen werden naumlmlich daszlig Jo-tham und Ahas historisch ein und dieselbe Person sind und zwar der Sohn von Koumlnig Ussia undKoumlnigin Jerusa (2 Koumln 153233) der die Koumlnigswuumlrde nach dem Vater uumlbernahmrdquo (18 emphasisin original) Irrespective of whether one can follow Gerhard von Rad ldquoDas judaumlische KoumlnigsritualrdquoTLZ 4(1947) 211ndash 16 in reconstructing a Judean coronation ceremony (cf the critical appraisal by Mar-kus Saur ldquoKoumlnigserhebungen im antiken Israelrdquo in Investitur- und Kroumlnungsrituale Herrschaft-seinsetzungen im kulturellen Vergleich eds Marian Steinicke and Stefan Weinfurter [Koumlln Boumlh-lau 2005] 29ndash42) he is probably right that carrying throne names was also common among the


cessor ndash Azariah and Uzziah⁴⁹ although the texts do not address the issue at allIf ldquoJothamrdquoand ldquoAhazrdquowere indeed listed as two different names of one king inthe sources underlying the synchronistic compilation this might be the reasonfor the extent of data mentioned above The data set only became ldquoincompleterdquowhen the compiler tried to construct a succession of two kings out of one Com-bined with the fact that according to 2Kgs 15 Azariah ruled for an unusuallylong time and that the transition to his successor is one of the few cases inwhich the text itself mentions particular circumstances which point to a coregen-cy it is conceivable that the two names refer to the period of coregency (Jotham)and ndash as a throne name ndash to the period of sole rule (Ahaz)⁵⁰ This could also bethe rationale behind the two figures for the reign length 16 years co-regency and6 years of sole rule

5 The Emergence of the ChronologicalConundrum

Building upon the descriptive (section 1) and analytical (sections 3 and 4) stepsundertaken so far it is now possible to present a synthesis and trace the literarydevelopment of the chronological conundrum in 2Kgs 15ndash 18

The collection of data on the Israelite kings which formed the basis of thesynchronistic chronology in the Book of Kings provided regnal year totals andsynchronistic accession dates With the exception of Pekah it probably con-tained the regnal year totals still extant in the Masoretic text With regards toPekah it may be assumed that the data set also included a date for the begin-ning of his reign as well as a regnal year total and subsequently an accessiondate for his successor Hoshea There is no reason to doubt the 52nd year of Azar-iah as the beginning of Pekahrsquos term One can only speculate about the date forHoshearsquos accession it might have been the 2nd year of Ahaz which would be rec-oncilable with the way the compiler of the synchronistic chronology conceptual-

Judean kings Texts like Isa 96 or Jer 236 presuppose it 2Kgs 2334 and 2417 report the renamingof Judean rulers by Egyptian or Babylonian kings Azariah 2Kgs 1421 151 6ndash8 17 23 27 Uzziah 2Kgs 1513 30 32 34 Isa 11 61 71 Hos 11Amos 11 Zech 145 2Chr 26 272 Notably in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Ahaz is mentioned as ldquoJehoahazrdquo ie withthe theophoric element in the beginning of his name as in Jotham Tadmor The Inscriptions ofTiglath-pileser III 170ndash 1 Summ 7 rev 11rsquo = Tadmor and Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Ti-glath-pileser III no 47 rev 11rsquo) mIa-uacute-ha-zi KURIa-uacute-da-a-a


ized this period Accordingly Pekahrsquos original reign length would have been2 years (Fig 5)

At some point the length of Pekahrsquos reign was erroneously changed to 20years This change goes hand in hand with synchronizing Hoshearsquos accessionwith the 20th year of Jotham (2Kgs 1530) because Pekah and Jotham begantheir respective terms in the same year The consequence was a second synchron-ism for Hoshearsquos accessionWhether both changes took place together or one fol-lowed the other remains unknown

This however was the state of affairs (see above Fig 2) when the Israelitedata reached the compiler who tried to combine them with the regnal year totalsof the Judean kings He found the following synchronisms 52nd year of Azariahfor Pekahrsquos accession and probably the 2nd year of Ahaz for Hoshearsquos and com-bined these data with the regnal year totals he extracted from his Judean mate-rial ie 16 years for Jotham 6 years for Ahaz and 29 years for Hezekiah using thesynchronistic alignment of Hoshea and Hezekiah as an anchor (see aboveFig 4) In doing so he had to fill the long stretch of time created by the prolon-gation of Pekahrsquos reign to 20 years which could not be completely covered by theregnal years provided for the Judean kings

In a final step Ahazrsquo reign length was changed from 6 to 16 years (cf aboveFig 2) which contradicted a number of synchronisms but probably prompted thecorrection of the date for Hoshearsquos accession from the 2nd year of Ahaz to his 12th

yearThis reconstruction including the identification of Jotham and Ahaz seems to

aggravate the old crux in the chronological data of Hezekiah namely his age

Fig 5 Diagram showing the reconstructed chronological data for the kings of Israel Preparedby the author


when he came to the throne⁵sup1 There can be no doubt that Ahaz is Hezekiahrsquosfather this is confirmed by a seal impression reading הדוהיךלמזחאוהיקזחל ⁵sup2 Ifndash as proposed above ndash Jotham and Ahaz are one and the same king and the bio-graphical information provided for Jotham (2Kgs 1533) is likely to retain the orig-inal data JothamAhaz was 25 years old at the beginning of his reign With areign length of 6 years this would make him 31 when his 25-year-old son Heze-kiah succeeded him and this is highly unlikely Counting however from the be-ginning of a 16-year coregency with Azariah he would be 47 at his death and22 years old at the time Hezekiah was born In this case he fits in well withthe other Judean kings At the same time another related riddle is solved Azar-iah would have been 27 years old at the time his successor was born and not atthe extraordinary age of 43

Like many other issues of chronology the synthesis of the chronological co-nundrum in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 presented here requires a certain degree of conjectureand speculation It should be understood however as an attempt to meet thefirst of Alfred Jepsenrsquos two requirements for any chronological reconstructionin elucidating the interaction of the numerical data and tracing their develop-ment the tradition is respected ndash probably more so than by simply taking itas a point of departure using only a suitable portion of the data and discardingthe rest This reconstruction now paves the way for tackling the second demandie the question of how this chronological concept might relate to the externaldata

Recent treatments of the question were offered by Young Hezekiah 24ndash28 who argues thatAhaz was a brother of Jotham and by Heckl ldquoHiskiardquowho has doubts about the chronologicaldata provided in 2Kgs 162 One such bulla was found in the Ophel Excavations see Eilat Mazar ldquoA Seal Impressionof King Hezekiah from the Ophel Excavationsrdquo in The Ophel Excavations to the South of the Tem-ple Mount 2009ndash2013 Final Reports vol I ed Eilat Mazar (Jerusalem Shoham 2015) 629ndash40Similar seal impressions had appeared earlier on the antiquities market and were published byNahman Avigad Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Jeremiah Remnants of a Burnt Archive (Jerusa-lem Israel Exploration Society 1986) no 199 Robert Deutsch ldquoLasting Impressions New Bul-lae Reveal Egyptian Style Emblems on Judahrsquos Royal SealsrdquoBAR 28 (2002) 42ndash51 60ndash62 andFrank Moore Cross ldquoKing Hezekiahrsquos Seal Bears Phoenician ImageryrdquoBAR 25 (1999) 42ndash45 60


Steven L McKenzie

The Last Days of Israel ChronologicalConsiderations

1 Introduction

This chapter surveys what I would consider the three main chronological prob-lems in 2Kgs 15 and critiques solutions that have been offered for them I have nosolution of my own to offer except to suggest that the problems may be beyondcomplete resolutionsup1

The following table lists the kings of Israel from Jehursquos revolt to the fall of thekingdom and their counterparts in Judah according to the Book of Kings I beginwith Jehu because his assassination of the kings of Israel and Judah marks a si-multaneous starting point for the chronologies of the two kingdomssup2 There areseven regnal accounts in 2Kgs 15 five kings of Israel (Zechariah Shallum Mena-hem Pekahiah and Pekah) sandwiched by Uzziah and Jotham of Judah

Israel Judah

Jehu (Kgs ) ndash yrs Athaliah (Kgs ) ndash yrsJehoahaz (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs Joash (Kgs ) ndash yrsJehoash (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs Amaziah (Kgs ndash) ndash yrsJeroboam II (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs Uzziah (Azariah) (Kgs f ndash) ndash yrsZechariah (Kgs ndash) ndash mos Jotham (Kgs ndash) ndash yrsShallum (Kgs ndash) ndash mo Ahaz (Kgs ) ndash yrsMenahem (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs Hezekiah (Kgs ndash)

I wish to thank to Shuichi Hasegawa for organizing this conference and for inviting me to takepart in it It was a pleasure for me to meet Kristin Weingart at this conference Her intriguingpaper which is included in this volume does offer a set of proposals some of which arenew Since these are part of an ongoing project ldquoGezaumlhlte Geschichterdquo that is not yet publishedand fully available for study and consideration I offer no detailed critique here though I do citeher paper which she graciously provided to me with some comments My impression is that herwork is a step forward with valuable insights about certain aspects of the chronological difficul-ties in 2Kgs 15ndash 18 even though her overall solution is susceptible to some of the same criticismsas previous proposals The joint starting point remains whether Jehu or the Aramaean author of the Tel Dan inscrip-tion was responsible for the assassinations The editio princeps of the complete (reconstructed)inscription is Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh ldquoThe Tel Dan Inscription A New Fragmentrdquo IEJ45 (1995) 1ndash18 The controversies surrounding its interpretation are well beyond the scope ofthis paper

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-014

Continued

Israel Judah

Pekahiah (Kgs ndash) ndash yrsPekah (Kgs ndash) ndash yrsHoshea (Kgs ndash) ndash yrs

2 Chronological Discrepancies

The first problem is really a type or category of problems consisting of disagree-ments among the chronological data supplied in the chapter These are signifi-cant disparities in numbers that go beyond minor discrepancies of a year ortwo that also exist but might be explained by differences in record keeping orthe use of different calendarssup3 For instance the reference in 151 to AzariahUz-ziah taking the throne of Judah in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam of Israeldisagrees with the chronological references in 141ndash2 17 23 which indicate thefifteenth year of Jeroboam as that of Azariahrsquos accession

th year of Jeroboam

th year of Jeroboam

Azariah began to reign in

th of Jeroboamndash Amaziah (Azariahrsquos father) accedes in

nd (of ) ofJehoash (Jeroboamrsquos father) = Azariahrsquos accession in

th ofJeroboam Amaziah lives yrs after Jehoashrsquos death = Azar-iahrsquos accession in

th of Jeroboam Jeroboam accedes in

th (of ) of Amaziah = Azar-iahrsquos accession in

th of Jeroboam

The case of Menahem is particularly interesting in this regard His accession is evidently datedto Azariah Uzziahrsquos 39th year after Shallumrsquos one-month reign (1513ndash14) Azariah is creditedwith a 10-year reign in 1517 but his succession by his son Pekahiah in Azariahrsquos 50th year(1523) indicates a reign of 11 yearsWeingart in her chapter in this volume picks up on a sug-gestion by Gershon Galil The Chronology of the Kings of Israel amp Judah (Leiden Brill 1996) 62that this reflects a change from ante- to postdating in Israel under the influence of Assyrianpractice which distinguished the accession year from the first regnal year following the NewYear She strengthens the suggestion with the observation that the formulae for kings before Me-nahem reflect antedating while those after him reflect postdating But there are complicationsthat make the suggestion inconclusive (1) Galil actually argues that the change began alreadywith Joash (2) The records for quite a number of kings before Menahem are incomplete sothat the regular practice of antedating for them is largely supposition (3) Menahem was notthe first Israelite king to be an Assyrian vassal so it is not clear why a change in reckoningshould have begun during his reign


Similarly 158 13 17 agree with each other in dating Zechariahrsquos accession to Uz-ziahrsquos thirty-eighth year but they are at odds with 1417 23 which indicate thatZechariah acceded in Uzziahrsquos twenty-sixth year (since Uzziah acceded in the fif-teenth of Jeroboamrsquos forty-one years)

th year of Uzziah

th year of Uzziah

In the th of Azariah Zechariah

became king (reigns months) Uzziahrsquos accession in Jeroboamrsquos

th

(of ) means Zechariah (Jeroboamrsquos successor)accedes in Uzziahrsquos

th

Shallum accedes in Uzziahrsquos th

(reigns one month) Menahem accedes in Uz-ziahrsquos

th

Such discrepancies are not peculiar to 2Kgs 15 but are relatively common inKings especially when the different textual witnesses are taken into considera-tion A popular way of dealing with them has been to posit a combination ofchanging systems of record keeping along with coregencies This approach isidentified especially with Edwin R Thiele and his book The Mysterious Numbersof the Hebrew Kings⁴ The approach is methodologically problematic because itcannot be proven false and because its application is often arbitrary There ismoreover a subtle agenda that drives its popularity to show that the Biblersquos fig-ures are all accurate they are just based on different sources

In the initial volume of the Harvard Semitic Monographs published in 1968James Shenkelrsquos Chronology and Recensional Development in the Greek Text ofKings offered a different solution mdash a text critical one Shenkel argued againstThielersquos approach that the MTrsquos numbers were a systematic revision of the prim-itive and more consistent chronology preserved in the Old Greek (OG)⁵ Shenkelrsquosexplanation has been adopted over the past five decades by such eminent textcritics as Adrian Schenker and Julio Trebolle Very recent research howeverhas called this explanation into question on text-critical grounds In an articlepublished in the Trebolle Festschrift (2012) Ron Hendel argued that the OG re-

Edwin R Thiele The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Grand Rapids MI Kregel 1983rev edition) James Shenkel Chronology and Recensional Development in the Greek Text of Kings (Cam-bridge MA Harvard University Press 1968)


vised the MT chronology rather than the other way around⁶ Hendel explainshow in 1Kgs 16 the MT and OG construe the starting point of Omrirsquos reign differ-ently The difference becomes clear in 1629 where the MT dates Ahabrsquos accessionto the thirty-eighth year of Asa of Judah while the OG dates it to the second yearof Asarsquos son Jehoshaphat a difference of five years The reason for this differ-ence is that the MT construes the beginning of Omrirsquos twelve-year reign fromthe point in 1621 when half of the people followed Omri and half Tibni Thiswas according to 1615 the twenty-seventh year of Asa of Judah The OG onthe other hand dates Omrirsquos reign from the point after Tibni had died whichwas the thirty-first year of Asa The OGrsquos phrase after Tibni at the end of v 22makes its dating clear Hendel contends that the MTrsquos construal of v 23 was idi-osyncratic and therefore a kind of lectio difficilior It is therefore more likely tohave been altered by the OGrsquos more ldquoliteralrdquo construal than the other wayaround That literal interpretation in turn led to (hyper)correction of the chronol-ogy in the OG in a manner typical of Second-Temple scribal hermeneutics

I would add an argument in support of Hendelrsquos case based on 2Kgs 816⁷The chart in Fig 1 illustrates the discussion that follows

The OG is not extant here but based on the foregoing figures in the OG chro-nology it would have had Jehoram of Judah taking the throne in the second yearof Ahaziah of Israel and reigning eleven years⁸ Since Ahaziahrsquos reign spans theend of Jehoshaphatrsquos and the beginning of Jehoramrsquos in the OG the proper placefor the account of Jehoramrsquos reign according to the OG chronology would havebeen immediately before the beginning of Israelite Joramrsquos ie between 2Kgs117 and 118 Not coincidentally this is where a single instance of OG chronologyin MT is found what Shenkel calls ldquoa precious witness to the OG chronology in aHebrew textrdquo⁹ The OG account of Jehoram was always in 2Kgs 8 where the MThas it because of the occurrence of two historical presentsmdashdistinguishing fea-tures of the OGmdashin 822 24 as Shenkel points out This means that the OG place-ment and the OG numbers are at odds The OG account of the reign of Jehoram isin the wrong place according to the ldquoprinciplesrdquo of the composition of Kings The

Ron Hendel ldquoThe Two Editions of the Royal Chronology in Kingsrdquo in Textual Criticism andDead Sea Scrolls Studies in Honour of Julio Trebolle Barrera ed Andreacutes Piquer Otero andPablo A Torijano Morales (Leiden Brill 2012) 99ndash114 The argument is more fully developed in an article entitled ldquoThe Priority of the MT Chronologyin Kingsrdquo that I have written for the forthcoming Festschrift for P Kyle McCarter So Shenkel Chronology 37ndash38 68ndash82 Shenkel Chronology 74 The notice in the Lucianic witnesses at 117b in agreement with MT ishexaplaric and therefore the result of secondary adjustment


only way this could have happened is if the MT chronology was the older oneThe OG introduced its revised figures into the MTrsquos placement

The systematic difference between the OG and MT chronologies is peculiarto the Omri dynasty and came to an end with Jehursquos simultaneous slaughter ofthe kings of both Israel and Judah in 2Kgs 9 It therefore has no direct bearingon 2Kgs 15 Indirectly however this evidence shows that the MT chronology isprimary We must contend with the MT figures in 2Kgs 15 and cannot dismissthem as the result of scribal revision

3 Regnal Totals

The totals for the kings of Israel and Judah are far apart for the period from thebeginning of AzariahUzziahrsquos reign to the fall of Samaria as shown in the fol-lowing table

Fig 1 The differences between the OG and MT chronologies Prepared by the author


Judah Israel

AzariahUzziah ndash Jeroboam ndash sup1⁰Jotham ndash Zechariah ndash monthsAhaz ndash Shallum ndash monthHezekiah ndash sup1sup1 Menahem ndash

Pekahiah ndash

Pekah ndash

Hoshea ndash

TOTAL years TOTAL years months

Azariahrsquos long reign and the administration of part of it by Jotham because of hisfatherrsquos skin disease (v 5) are unusual features of his account that have suggest-ed a partial solution to this problem of the totals Alfred Jepsen proposed that allof Jothamrsquos reign and part of Ahazrsquos as well were included within Azariahrsquossup1sup2 Hepointed out the consistency in the ages of the kings of Judah at the births of theiroldest sons as determined from the ages given for their successors when they as-cended to the throne The average age of Judahite kings at the time of the birthsof their oldest sons was twentysup1sup3 Jotham is reported to have been twenty-five years old when he became king (1533) Assuming that his father Azariahwas about twenty when Jotham was born he would have been forty-five at Jo-thamrsquos accession Since Azariah himself became king at age 16 (2Kgs 152) Jo-thamrsquos accession would have taken place in Azariah twenty-ninth regnal yearThis was following Jepsen the year that Azariah became afflicted with skin dis-ease and was removed to his quarantined residence (v 5)sup1⁴ The remaining twen-

Numbered from the year of Uzziahrsquos accession as calculated from 1417 23 The 84 years assigned to the reigns of Azariah Jotham and Ahaz are too long for the allottedperiod which covers 61ndash73 years Figuring the start of Azariahrsquos reign ca 788 and the start ofHezekiahrsquos reign in 727 = 61 years If the beginning of Hezekiahrsquos reign is dated to 715 the differ-ence is 73 years 2Kgs 1810 dates the fall of Samaria to Hezekiahrsquos sixth year (721 + 6 = 727) How-ever 1813 dates the invasion of Sennacherib (701 BCE) to Hezekiahrsquos 14th year marking 715 as thestart of his reign Alfred Jepsen ldquoZur Chronologie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda Eine Uumlberpruumlfungrdquo in Un-tersuchungen zur israelitisch-juumldischen Chronologie ed A Jepsen and R Hanhart (Berlin deGruyter 1964) 1ndash48 The exceptions are readily explained Jepsen ldquoZur Chronologierdquo 43 The exact sense of תישפחהתיבב is uncertain The expression occurs in the HB only here andin variant form in the 2Chr 2621 parallel Because ישפח designates a person who is free fromslavery (Exod 212 5 26 27 Deut 1512 13 18 Jer 349ndash 11 14 16 Isa 586 Job 319) or exemptfrom taxes and conscription (1Sam 1725) the present passage has been construed to meanthat Azariah was exempted from kingly duties Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings


ty-three years attributed to his reign then included all of Jothamrsquos sixteen yearsplus the first seven years of Ahazrsquos reign

Jepsenrsquos theory is attractive for its reduction of the total regnal years of thekings of Judah for the period from Azariah to the fall of Samaria from 90 to 67years which is very close to the total (68) for Israelite kings during the same pe-riod However there are some caveats First it is clear that this situation wasatypical and should not be seen as a license for postulating coregencies through-out the history of the monarchy Also it may not be accurate to cast Jothamrsquos gov-erning ( טפש ) as ldquoco-regencyrdquo since the text does not state that he was made kingat this time and seems to avoid the root ךלמ Thus however the overlap betweenUzziah and Jotham was understood by contemporaries 2Kgs 157 construes theirldquoreignsrdquo as sequential employing the regular succession formulae and indicat-ing thereby that Jotham had an independent reign which began with the death ofhis father (v 7)

Another serious problem is that despite the chronological assistance ren-dered by Jepsenrsquos theory sixty-seven years is still too large a total for the periodsince the twenty years ascribed to Pekah must be reduced to six or seven as wewill see yielding a total of fifty-four or fifty-five regnal years for Israel in this pe-riod The total for Judahrsquos kings must therefore be further reduced by a dozenyears in order to correspond This need for further reduction is the impetus be-hind appeals to additional coregencies though the evidence for them is lackingIt seems more likely that one of the recorded numbers is erroneous The sugges-tion to read six instead of sixteen in for the length of Jothamrsquos reign (1533) or ofAhazrsquos (162) may have meritsup1⁵ While there is no textual evidence for the emen-dation it is suspicious that both Jotham and Ahaz are credited with sixteen-year

(New York Doubleday 1988) 166 (citing Qimhi) James A Montgomery A Critical and ExegeticalCommentary on the Books of Kings (Edinburgh TampT Clark) 448 However the occurrence ofbtḫpṯt in the Baal Cycle (Manfried Dietrich Oswald Lorenz and Joseacute Sanmartiacuten Die keilalphabe-tischen Texte aus Ugarit einschlieszliglich der keilalphabetischen Texte auszligerhalb Ugarits Teil 1Transkription [Kevelaer Butzon amp Bercker 1976] no 4 VIII 7ndash9) in the context of descent tothe underworld (wrd btḫpṯtrsquoarṣ tsprbyrdmrsquoarṣ) suggests some other kind of meaning My ren-dering tentatively follows Wilhelm Rudolph ldquoUssias ʽHaus der Freiheitrsquordquo ZAW 89 (1977)418ndash20 who suggests ldquohouse of freedomrdquo as a euphemism actually meaning ldquohouse of no free-domrdquo ie a place of isolation or quarantine Unfortunately he does not consider the Ugariticevidence John Gray I amp II Kings A Commentary (Philadelphia PA Westminster 1970 2nd edition)628ndash29 and Gwilym H Jones 1 and 2 Kings (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1984) 531 proposereading 6 for 16 in 1533Weingart in her chapter in this volume following Claus Schedl ldquoTextk-ritische Bemerkungen zu den Synchronismen der Koumlnige von Israel und Judardquo VT 12 (1962)90ndash93 suggests it for Ahaz


reigns In that case Uzziahrsquos fifty-two years would have coincided with the reignsof Jotham and Ahaz and the first year of Hezekiah yielding a total of fifty-sevenyears for the period If we grant the possibility that Uzziah may have been eigh-teen when Jotham was born this total is reduced to fifty-five matching Israelrsquostotal

It is obvious at this point however that the process has become quite spec-ulative Thus while there seems to be something to Jepsenrsquos theory the furtheradjustments required to make it work remind us that it is still very much hypo-thetical

4 Pekahiah (1523ndash26) and Pekah (1527ndash31)sup1⁶

MT and GB ascribe two years to Pekahiahrsquos reign while GL reads ten The num-bers in 1527 32 accord with the two-year figure but 171 (MT) assumes a ten-year reign for Pekahiah Ten years is impossible according to the Assyrian evi-dence The annals of Tiglath-pileser III (745ndash727 BCE) mention Menahemrsquos pay-ment of tribute in 738 BCEsup1⁷ The annals and other inscriptions also note Tiglath-pileserrsquos installation of Hoshea as king of Israel in 73130 after the Assyrian cam-paigns against Pekah and Razon and the conquest of Damascussup1⁸ This leaves no

1530b is secondary It has Hoshea accede in the 20th year of Jotham and is in obvious con-tradiction of v 33 where Jotham reigns 16 years It reflects secondary calculation based on vv 2732 where Pekah becomes king in the same year as Jotham though slightly before him It is alsoabsent from LXXL and is not a regular feature of conspiracy notices like the one in v 30a Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011)nos 14 27 32 and 35 The inscription from Iran (text 35) is undated However its list of tributepayers is apparently earlier since it mentions Tubail (Itto-Baal) as king of Tyre instead of hissuccessor Hiram who is mentioned in the annals (text 32 and reconstructed by Tadmor and Ya-mada in texts 14 27)William H Shea ldquoMenahem and Tiglath-pileser IIIrdquo JNES 37 (1978) 43ndash49and Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notes on the Kingdoms of Israel and Judahin the Eighth Century BCrdquo VT 36 (1986) 81 date the Iran inscription to 740 BCE and correlate itwith the notice of Menahemrsquos payment in 2Kgs 1519 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and ChronologicalNotesrdquo 82 argues further that Menahem made a second tribute payment in 738 and that thisis the payment recorded in the annals Shea ldquoMenahemrdquo 49 denies that a second paymentis necessary and thinks that Menahemrsquos name was simply listed again as part of a general sum-mary But his argument does not adequately take into consideration the difference in genre be-tween the annals and the non-annalistic text The change in the name of the Tyrian king indi-cates the different settings of the two documents and nullifies the attempt of Thiele MysteriousNumbers 125ndash28 to date Menahemrsquos payment early to 743 BCE See especially Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notesrdquo 71ndash74


more than nine years (738ndash730 inclusive) for the reigns of both Pekahiah andPekah where MT assigns twenty-two years two for Pekahiah and twenty forPekah The main problem is the ascription of a twenty-year reign to Pekah

Here several solutions have been proposed Since the two names Pekahiahand Pekah are the same the suggestion was made some time ago that they werehistorically identicalsup1⁹ If so it would reduce the number of kings of Israel forthis period and might help with the chronological problems by reducing thetotal number of regnal years required for the two kings Nevertheless thereare cogent reasons for distinguishing them First the formula lay with his ances-tors used for Menahem indicates royal successionsup2⁰ That is Pekahiah was Me-nahemrsquos son while Pekah has a distinct patronymic Remaliah Then there isthe radical difference between the two kings embodied in the account of acoup drsquoeacutetat and assassination as well as the change of policy toward AssyriaPekahiah might have altered his fatherrsquos pro-Assyrian stance but there wouldbe no need to hide this by inventing another king with the same name and anoverthrow Finally v 25 raises the possibility that Pekah was from Gilead inTransjordan and hence had an entirely different origin from Pekahiahrsquos Appa-rently therefore the similarity of the names is coincidental or is to be explainedin some other waysup2sup1

Among the other possibilities for explaining Pekahrsquos inordinately long reignthat have been put forward the simplest is that the number twenty is a textualerrorsup2sup2 This suggestion cannot be dismissed as easily as Narsquoaman would have itin view of the evidence for textual and chronological variation in Kings and es-pecially in the present chaptersup2sup3 Still a clear understanding of how the errormight have happened is necessary before this proposal can be fully convincingsup2⁴

Fritz Hommel ldquoAssyriardquo in A Dictionary of the Bible vol 1 ed James Hastings (EdinburghTampT Clark 1898) 186 argues that Pekahiah and Pekah were the same king who reigned only2 years Matthew J Suriano The Politics of Dead Kings (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2010) Dennis Olson ldquoPekahrdquo in The Anchor Bible Dictionary vol 5 ed David Noel Freedman (NewYork Doubleday 1992) 214ndash 15 suggests that it was a means for Pekah to claim legitimacy William Foxwell Albright ldquoThe Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of Israelrdquo BASOR 100(1945) 21ndash22William H Barnes 1ndash2 Kings (Carol Stream IL Tyndale House 2012) 157 For addi-tional scholars who adopt this position see Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notesrdquo 75n 9 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notesrdquo 75 The reading of ten ( רשע ) instead of twenty ( םירשע ) proposed by Gray Kings 64ndash65 and Mar-tin Rehm Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige (Wuumlrzburg Echter 1982) 150 does not help because it isstill more than the time allotted by the Assyrian evidence for Pekahrsquos reign The suggestion ofGeorg Hentschel 2 Koumlnige (Wuumlrzburg Echter 1985) 71 that 16 years were added to Pekahrsquos


Perhaps the most widely accepted explanation assumes the genuineness ofthe twenty-year reading and argues that it includes years spent by Pekah as theruler of a rival kingdom in Transjordan beginning with the accession of Mena-hem if not the end of Jeroboam IIrsquos reignsup2⁵ Scholars who favor this view findallusions to the division in Kings and the Prophetssup2⁶ But there is no clear refer-ence in Kings to this division as there was for the factions of Zimri Tibni andOmri (1Kgs 16) A more serious problem is the reference in v 25 to Pekah as Pe-kahiahrsquos šālicircš It is hard to believe that Pekah would have served as the adjutantfor two kings (Menahem and Pekahiah) while he was head of a rival kingdomOne pair of commentators even suggests that Pekahiah tried to solve the problemof Pekahrsquos rivalry by giving him the rulership of Gileadsup2⁷ Galil recognizes theproblem and surmises that Pekah was an official appointed by Jeroboam IIover Gilead and that the twenty years of his regnal tenure are calculated fromthat appointmentsup2⁸

Two other proposals are similar to the rival kingdom theorysup2⁹ One holds thatPekah considered himself the legitimate heir of the Jehu dynasty and thereforecounted his regnal years from the end of Zechariahrsquos or even Jeroboam IIrsquosreign ignoring the reigns of Menahem and Pekahiahsup3⁰ Alternatively an early

4-year reign in an effort to accommodate the 16 years attributed to Jotham of Judah after it wasforgotten that Jothamrsquos years were incorporated within his fatherrsquos (following Jepsenrsquos theory) isingenious but unprovable and unfalsifiable This view was conceived by Carl Lederer Die biblische Zeitrechnung vom Auszuge aus Aumlgypt-en bis zum Beginne der babylonischen Gefangenschaft (Erlangen Kleeberger 1888) 135ndash38 de-veloped by H J Cook ldquoPekahrdquo VT 14 (1964) 121ndash35 and advanced by Thiele Mysterious Num-bers 129ndash32 Cf James Maxwell Miller and John H Hayes A History of Ancient Israel and Judah(Louisville KY London Westminster John Knox 2006 2nd edition) 370ndash72 Miller and Hayes History 371ndash2 appeal to the statement in 1537 that Pekah with Razon hadbegun harassing Judah already in the reign of Jotham when Pekah would not yet have been onthe throne in Samaria The observation is astute but as they go on to point out the organizationof the material in Kings is often more theological than chronological Pierre Buis Le Livre desRois (Paris Librairie Lecoffre 1997) 244ndash45 finds an allusion to the divided North in the refer-ence to Manasseh devouring Ephraim and vice-versa in Isa 919ndash20 It is not clear though thatthe intertribal strife alluded to in this passage entails a separate Transjordan kingdom Richard D Patterson and Hermann J Austel ldquo1 2 Kingsrdquo The Expositorrsquos Bible Commentaryvol 3 (Grand Rapids MI Zondervan 2005 revised edition) 887 They actually refer to Pekahiahldquobringing Pekah into a position of prominencerdquo but in context this must mean the rule over Gi-lead Galil Chronology 65ndash66 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical and Chronological Notesrdquo 76ndash80 W J Chapman ldquoThe Problem of Inconsequent Post-Dating in II Kings XV 13 17 and 23rdquoHUCA 2 (1925) 59


chronographer who considered Menahem and Pekahiah as usurpers countedback from the beginning of Pekahrsquos reign to the end of the Jehu dynasty and at-tributed the intervening years to Pekah Narsquoaman finds support for these theoriesin the supposition that both Jehu and Pekah along with Elijah and Elisha werefrom Gilead and that they all reflect a Gileadite strain of opposition to the Omr-ides and then to Menahem and Pekahiah as interlopers The theory is ingeniousand may be on to something in its perception of Gileadite roots behind thesecharacters But again there are questions Elijah and Elisha are not always por-trayed as opponents of the king There is also no indication in Kings that Pekahwas related to the Jehuids or had any grounds for being considered the legitimateheir of that dynasty In short the reason for the attribution of twenty years toPekahrsquos reign remains obscure Fortunately it does not seriously affect recon-struction of the overall chronology but only because it is clear from non-biblicalevidence that we are dealing with a period of at most nine years (738ndash73130)rather than the twenty-two years that Kings ascribes to Pekahiahrsquos and Pekahrsquosreigns

To conclude there is no clear solution for these chronological problems in2Kgs 15While there were no doubt isolated scribal errors these problems go be-yond text-critical solutions There may have been genuine sources containinghistorical data behind the regnal formulae in 2Kgs 15sup3sup1 but they were eitherbadly corrupted or badly misunderstood by author of Kings Full restoration ap-pears to be an impossibility The explanations for Uzziahrsquos extraordinarily longreign and for the reigns of Pekahiah and Pekah for all the advantages theyoffer are essentially scholarly conjectures The main point of relevance for thetopic of this conference is that chronological data preserved in 2Kgs 15 the dens-est collection of reports about the kings of the ldquolast days of Israelrdquo are essential-ly unusable for historical reconstruction

See Weingartrsquos chapter in this volume which proposes that the chronological data in 2Kgs15ndash 18 are based on a list of regnal years and synchronistic accession years of Israelite kingsand a set of regnal years for Judahite kings


Part VI Working with the Book of Kingsthe Narrative

Christian Frevel

Wicked Usurpers and the Doom of Samaria

Further Views on the Angle of 2 Kings 15ndash17

1 Preliminary Remarks on the Credibilityof Details in Historiography

In this paper I will argue that the chaotic portrayal of the last days of the king-dom of Israel follows the Judean bias more than it accurately reflects the courseof historical events in the second half of the eighth century BCE While some ofthe information is historically correct the general impression is that the biblicaldescription is intended to smear the northern state and its legitimacy According-ly the general tendency in portraying the Northern Kingdom is to emphasize thecoups in the last 25 years in Samaria The usual assumption that the greater partof information ndash particularly that given in 2Kgs 15 ndash is drawn from Samarian an-nalssup1 is misleading This assumption is based on the principle that the biblicalrecord is an accurate representation of history rather than being largely invent-ed The biblical text is assumed to be correct unless strong arguments speakagainst it This a priori assumption that derives from credibility assessmentsof testimonies in legal proceedings has to be questioned in many respectswhen it comes to historiography Even detailed information can be inventedHowever this does not necessarily mean that details indicate only the fictive in-ventiveness of authors In this aspect one has to agree with William G Deverrsquosstatement that details have to be ldquoleft in the realm of possibility unless they ap-pear so fantastic that they lack any credibilityrdquosup2 But one has to bear in mind thatnot everything that is possible is probable and not everything that is credible isfactual

This chapter was language-edited by Denise Bolton (Munich)

See eg Antoon Schoors The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the Eighth and Seventh Centu-ries BCE (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2013) 12 ldquoThe accounts of these usurpa-tions and other events must have been taken from some source most likely the aforementionedannals (1510 14 16 19ndash20 25 29ndash30)rdquo William G Dever Beyond the Texts An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (At-lanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2017) 366

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-015

However the opposite a priori assumption that gives credibility to the extra-biblical accounts is just as bad Hence it is necessary to discuss aspects of his-toricity literary composition and tendencies of presentation (ldquoDarstellungsten-denzenrdquo) alike The aim of this discussion is not to prove the biblical accountright or wrong but rather to evaluate its probability and accuracy I use the por-trayal of the last kings of Israel in 2Kgs 15 as a test case and I will demonstratethe accountrsquos bias

While most of the studies have engaged in the trouble of dating and chronol-ogy fewer studies have taken a closer look at the biblical representation of theeighth century BCE in 2Kgs 15 which is highly biased The chapter mentionsseven kings of Israel in total including the last king of the Nimshide dynasty Ze-chariah who is followed by the reigns of Shallum Menahem Pekahiah Pekahand finally the last king Hoshea In focusing on the reported revolts the presentpaper will not so much engage in chronological issues This is not only due to thefact that the chronology is dealt with masterfully in this volume by Kristin Wein-gart and Stephen L McKenzie it is also on methodological account because Ihave sincere doubts that we can fix the biblical chronology in the Book ofKings in exact figures The following overview does not intend to settle the chro-nological issues under debatesup3 but is meant to provide a rough framework forthe events discussed

Kingrsquos name Length of reign according to the Bible Assumed historical framework

Zechariah months BCEShallum month ndash BCEMenahem years ndash BCEPekahiah years ndash BCEPekah years ndash BCEHoshea years (following Kgs ) ndash BCE

The lengthy presentation of the decline of the Northern Kingdom consists of24 verses comprising almost 15 years up to the reign of the last king HosheaOn the one hand apart from the great reflection chapters and the narrativesin the Book of Kings no other period is characterized so extensively in historio-graphical respect On the other hand the historical information given in the an-nalistic script is scarce no particular background of the four revolts is given andthe Assyrians are mentioned only twice first in the reign of Menahem and thenin the reign of Pekah The substantial loss of territory in 73332 BCE in the 13th

Cf Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2016) 161ndash63


and 14th palucirc both named as a-na KURDi-maš-qa⁴ is related in almost only onesentence in 2Kgs 1529

The verse lists the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser capturing cities in the northIjon Abel-beth-maacah Janoah Kedesh Hazor Gilead and Galilee The biblicallist concludes with ldquoall the land of Naphtalirdquoand a note on the mass deportationof people to Assyria ( הרושאםלגיו ) Although the report of the 12th palucirc is missingin the Kalḫu Annals the Assyrian sources give some information on the 12th palucirc(a-na KURPi-liš-ti ldquoagainst [the Land of] Philistiardquo) and the 13th palucirc (a-na KURDi-maš-qa ldquoagainst [the land of] Damascusrdquo) and the subjugation of these landsHowever more detailed information on the annexation of the northern territoryis completely missing⁵ No further information is given on the political status ofSamaria after the campaigns of Tiglath-Pileser III let alone the status of theprovince after the conquest of Samaria

Some peculiarities accompany the portrayal of the kings⁶ While it holdstrue that the burial of the northern king is not generally part of the annalisticframework⁷ the burial is mentioned with Baasha (1Kgs 166) Omri (1Kgs1628) Ahab (1Kgs 2237) Jehu (2Kgs 1035) Jehoahaz (2Kgs 139) Joash (2Kgs1313) and (if we accept the originality of the Antiochene text which attestsκαι εταφη εν Σαμαρεια)⁸ for Jeroboam II in 4Kgdms 1429 ndash he is the last king bur-

For a proposed ordering of the campaigns see Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Cam-paigns in 734ndash732 BC Historical Background of Isa 7 2 Kgs 15ndash 16 and 2 Chr 27ndash28rdquo Bib 87(2006) 153ndash70 esp 157ndash61 Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assy-ria Critical Edition with Introductions Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem The Israel Acad-emy of Sciences and Humanities 1994) 232ndash82 For the Assyrian point of view see the textual evidence assembled in Tadmor Inscriptions27ndash215 and Manfred Weippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament (Goumlttingen Vanden-hoeck amp Ruprecht 2010) further Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Summary Inscription 9ndash 10(2117F)rdquo in The Context of Scripture vol 2 Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical WorldedWilliam W Hallo and Kyle Lawson Younger Jr (Leiden Brill 2000) 291ndash92 For a quick over-view see William W Hallorsquos Introduction in Hallo and Younger The Context of Scripture vol 2xxindashxxvi Heather D Baker ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrdquo in RlA 13 ed Michael P Streck (2014) 22Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC)and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011)2ndash18 232ndash37 Note further the formula of the ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo (2Kgs 159 24 םעבריתואטחמרסאל 2Kgs 1518

םעבריתואטחלעמרסאל 2Kgs 1528 םעבריתואטח־ןמרסאל the evaluation formula can be foundwith Zechariah Menahem Pekaiah Pekah It is lacking with Shallum and Hoshea (in 2Kgs 17) Notes on the burial are missing for Jeroboam Nadab Elah Simri Ahaziah Joram JeroboamII (MT) and all following kings Natalio Fernandez Marcos and Joseacute Ramoacuten Busto Saiz El Texto Antioqueno De la Biblia GriegaII 1ndash2 Reyes (Madrid CSIC 1992) 125


ied in Samaria Any further notice of burial is missing particularly for the lastkings of Israel This already underlines that the composition of 2Kgs 15 is specialThe murdered kings do not ldquopass awayrdquo and are not even buried For Menahemthe only king who had a legal successor with his son Pekahiah the pass-away-formula is used ויתבא־םעםחנמבכשיו (2Kgs 1522) but no burial is mentioned Be-sides the evaluation formula which is lacking for Shallum and emendated forthe reign of Hoshea it is the formulaic expression of the regicide which is strik-ingly similar with all four revolts (Shallum Menahem Pekah Hoshea) includ-ing the phrase לערשק (lacking with Menahem) הכנ and the following phrase

ויתחתךלמיווהתימיו ⁹

Shallum v ויתחתךלמיווהתימיוםע־לבקוהכיושבי־ןבםלשוילערשקיו

Menahem v b ויתחתךלמיווהתימיוןורמשבשיבי־ןבםולש־תאךיו

Pekah v ויתחתךלמיווהתימיו]hellip[ןורמשבוהכיוושילשוהילמר־ןבחקפוילערשקיו

Hoshea v a ויתחתךלמיווהתימיווהכיווהילמר־ןבחקפ־לעהלא־ןבעשוהרשק־רשקיו

Table 1 The four revolts in 2Kgs 15

The verb רשק ldquoto bind (together)rdquo in the G-stem is the technical term used forconspiracies particularly for military coups Significantly it is used in an inten-sifying compound with the noun רשק for Hoshea The verb is also employedfor Baasha (1Kgs 1527) Zimri (1Kgs 169 20) Jehu (2Kgs 914 109) Shallum(2Kgs 1510 15) and the rebellions against Athaliah Joash Amaziah andAmon (2Kgs 1119 1220 1419 2123ndash24)

In the following I will try to evaluate the upheavals and regicides in the con-text of the portrayal of the northern monarchy 1Kgs 12ndash2Kgs 17

2 The General Assessment of the Northas Unstable Entity

The designation of the Northern Kingdom as unstable is deliberate Of the20 kings (including the unlucky Tibni who ndash following 1Kgs 1622 ndash was dis-placed allegedly without reigning as king) one half are irregular or illegitimatesuccessors (Jeroboam I Baasha Zimri Tibni Omri Jehu Shallum Menahem

For the formula see also Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fall According to2 Kings 15rdquo Bib 953 (2014) 321ndash46


Pekah Hoshea)sup1⁰ This is in stark contrast to the supposed continuity of the Da-vidic dynasty in Jerusalem The lengthy reign of Ahaz who survived almost fourIsraelite kings clearly underlines the contrast between stability and volatilityThe historic background of this characteristic on both sides is difficult to evalu-ate in particular While former studies in the history of kingdoms took the con-tinuity of the Davidic kingdom for granted and the vicissitude of the Israelitemonarchy as a historical characteristic of this political entitysup1sup1 one has to bemore cautious I have argued elsewhere that the uninterrupted continuity ofthe Davidic dynasty is a Judean construct at least before King Ahaz in Jerusa-lemsup1sup2 As regards the northern monarchy we have indications that the Omrides(Omri Ahab Ahaziah and Jehoram) and the Nimshides (Jehu Jehoahaz JoashJeroboam II and Zechariah) formed dynasties which reigned continuously over50 or even 100 years

All northern kings are portrayed as villains and the Deuteronomists donot judge even a single ruler positively making the assumption untenable thatregicide was in fact the norm for the succession of power Particularly if readagainst the background of the economic and political success of the NorthernKingdom one cannot take the volatility as described in the biblical accountsas an evaluative starting point On the other hand the most successful periodsunder the reign of the Omrides and Nimshides are portrayed as dynasticallymore stable so the biblical descriptions may have some foundation in historicalfact But strikingly upheavals and regicides increase in the last 25 years of thekingdom of Samaria a fact that was emphasized by Peter Dubovskyacute as part ofthe Deuteronomistic reasoning regarding Samariarsquos demise ldquothe biblical textpoints to the first cause of the downfall of Samariardquosup1sup3 Although the presentpaper has profited very much from Dubovskyacutersquos sophisticated analysis the sug-gestion that 2Kgs 15 not only ldquowashes dirty laundryrdquo but gives an implicitcause for the fall of Samaria in historical respect calls for some critique Hispaper aims to understand the ldquodynamics latent in the society of the Northern

Based on various arguments Peter Dubovskyacute counts seven revolts during that time in thenorth He sees the number as deliberate ldquoin order to convey the idea of completenessrdquo Du-bovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 325 Although this is a tempting argument I doubt that the num-ber of actual revolts was reduced in order to reach the number seven I see in particular theexclusion of Omri as problematic see below The impression is emphasized if the instability is compared against the long reigns of Azar-iah and Ahaz Frevel Geschichte Israels 178 228 Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 326


Kingdom which hellip led to its fallrdquosup1⁴ which is at the end itself a kind of a Deuter-onomistic approach by taking the instability of the Northerners for granted Butisnrsquot northern instability as a general feature and a lsquobirth defectrsquo more rhetorical-ly true than it is factually true The ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo that drives the critique inthe biblical portrayal of northern history is an invention of tradition rather thanit is historically grounded The term ldquoinvention of traditionrdquo that Eric Hobsbawmintroduced into the historianrsquos vocabulary denotes supposed facts that evolve tomythic power in forming ldquohistoryrdquo These ldquofactsrdquo can be demonstrated as beingprojected backwards if not invented at allsup1⁵ Recent evaluations of the ldquosin of Jer-oboamrdquo point exactly in that directionsup1⁶ I have argued elsewhere that JeroboamIrsquos reign is in fact an invention to install a damaged eponym and to mark thebirth of the Northern Kingdom as corrupted (see further below) Thus one shouldnot build historiography on this highly colored portrayal to reconstruct deephistorical structures Moreover had the coups drsquoeacutetat actually ldquoravaged the North-ern Kingdomrdquo as Dubovskyacute is ready to assume Assessed from the archaeologi-cal evidence this evaluation remains doubtful While Dubovskyacute can be praisedfor his detailed discussion his blending of literary and historical analyses isopen to some methodological critique However although being more skepticalI agree with Dubovskyacute in attempting to get somewhat behind the rhetoric of2Kgs 15

My approach to 2Kgs 15 is firstly to evaluate the literary design of the presen-tation and not to buy into its bias too quickly And if historical information islacking from the extra-biblical accounts it should not be added from the Deu-teronomistic narrative 1Kgs 15ndash 17 forms an unfavorable framework to the histo-ry of SamariaIsrael and does not aim to be a proper historical account Howev-er although most of the defamatory information is suspicious there are actuallyno strong indications to question the biblical data for Israel in principle Onlysome information can be proved more or less wrong by extra-biblical sources

Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 321 See Eric J Hobsbawm ldquoIntroduction Inventing Traditionsrdquo in The Invention of Tradition edEric J Hobsbawm and Terence O Ranger (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1983) 1ndash14 See Frevel Geschichte Israels 148ndash51 231 Angelika Berlejung ldquoTwisting Traditions Pro-grammatic Absence-Theology for the Northern Kingdom in I Kgs 1226ndash33 (the lsquoSin of Jero-boamrsquo)rdquo JNSL 35 (2009) 1ndash42


3 Destroyers Subversive Forces andRevolutions The North as a Chaotic Entity

While it is not possible to go into every detail in this essay I will now take a clos-er look at the portrayal of the northern state I will briefly address each of theten non-dynastic irregular rulers of the Northern Kingdom with a short com-ment This is to demonstrate the general tendency to devalue and denouncethe North on the one hand and to highlight certain characteristics in the partic-ular portrayals on the other hand My thesis is that the portrayal of Israel as anunstable entity which is shaped by a chain of revolts is more or less invented itis fabrication rather than fact

31 Jeroboam I

From its very beginning in 1Kgs 11ndash 14 the history of the North is already prob-lematic When does it become reliable If we accept that with regard to histor-icity there was no United Monarchy (in the sense of a state that covered boththe territory of Judah and Samaria or an even larger territory that includedthe Negev Shephelah the Mediterranean coast the hill country of Ephraimand Gilboa and even Galilee Bashan and Gileadsup1⁷) then there was no divisionof ldquokingdomsrdquo at all The struggle between Jeroboam I and Rehoboam over thesuccession to Solomonrsquos throne the opposition between the northern and south-ern tribes and the historical reconstruction of a division of kingdoms are mythrather than historysup1⁸ We cannot go into a detailed analysis here but there areample reasons to consider the biblical reconstruction in 1Kgs 11ndash 14 as inventedtradition the double justification of the division in 1Kgs 11ndash 12 the forced laborof Solomon the election scene in Shechem the establishment of Bethel and Danas state sanctuaries the resemblance between Jeroboam I (the dynastic founder)and Jeroboam II and the Judean bias evident in the name-play of the ldquoPeoplersquosContenderrdquo [Jeroboam radic ביר ] and the ldquoPeoplersquos Expanderrdquo [Rehoboam radic בחר ]sup1⁹

See Frevel Geschichte Israels 103ndash48 See Frevel Geschichte Israels 148ndash65 id ldquoDisrupted or conjoined A new proposal regard-ing the division of kingdoms in the history of Israelrdquo (delivered at IOSOT Stellenbosch 2016 to bepublished 2018) id ldquoBen Hadad I and his alleged campaign to the North in 1 Kings 1517ndash20rdquo(delivered at SBL Boston 2017 to be published 2018) I am grateful to Jonathan Robker for this translation of my German pun ldquoVolksweiter undVolksstreiterrdquo


etc Many arguments point in the direction that 1Kgs 1126ndash 1430 is a literary ac-count with only a few historic details if there are any at allWith regard to a his-torical reconstruction of events the first revolt by the people of Israel is neitherdirected against a Jerusalemite prerogative nor is the origin of Israel as an inde-pendent monarchy related to a coup drsquoeacutetat In contrast to 1Kgs 1126 Jeroboam Idid not raise his hand against Solomon ( ךלמבדיםריו ) because of the corveacutee inJerusalem and he did not tear apart the northern tribes from the south By in-venting an upheaval that initiated the Northern Kingdom it became sinful fromthe moment of its foundation even if Solomon is blamed (later) for his misdo-ings (particularly for his mixed marriages and religious deviance) In sum tobuild a history of the northern state based on the account in 1Kgs 11ndash 14 is ldquoskat-ing on thin icerdquo From the historical side we cannot say anything safe about Jer-oboam I if he existed at all

32 Baasha

Although presenting some details the information about Baasharsquos reign is notvery consistent It is noted in formulaic manner that there was war betweenAsa and Baasha throughout his reign (1Kgs 1516 and the repetition of the phrasein 1Kgs 1532) and that he built Ramah to hinder Asa going north Asa himselfshould have bribed the Arameans to push back Baasha When Baasha wasthreatened by the Arameans he withdrew from Ramah and built Tirzah ( לדחיו

הצרתבבשיוהמרה־תאתונבמ 1Kgs 1521) Subsequently Asa built Geba with thestones of Ramah (1Kgs 1522) Although several places named Ramah are men-tioned in the OT (Josh 1326 198 29 36 etc) only the Ramah in Benjamin(Josh 1825 Neh 1133) er-Rām (today al-Ram coord OIG 17211402)sup2⁰ aboutfive miles north of Jerusalem can be taken into account for identification Ac-cordingly the previously-mentioned Geba can be identified with Ǧeba (coordOIG 17491405) whereas Tirzah is Tell el-Fār‛ah in the North (coord OIG18231882) The archaeological record cannot decide issues but it is strikingthat neither Ramah nor Geba nor Tirzah show traces of building activitieswhich can be attributed to Asa or Baasha All these places show evidence oflater building activities mostly in the Iron IIB if anything

Localizations are given following the map reference points of the so-called Palestine Grid1923 (= OIG ldquoOld Israel Gridrdquo) Add 500 to the latitude and 5000 to the longitude to receivethe Israeli Transverse Mercator coordinates 1994 (= NIG ldquoNew Israel Gridrdquo)


That the portrayal of Baasharsquos reign is drawn from literary sources ratherthan from historical records is further corroborated by the other information in1Kgs 15 The text in 1Kgs 15 presents Baasha as an Aramean proteacutegeacute or atleast as under Aramean influence (1Kgs 1519) but neither his nor Asarsquos affilia-tion with Ben-Hadad (who is actually not found in the extra-biblical record atall) has left traces outside of the Bible To make a long story short many reasonssuggest that this very Ben-Hadad and his influence on Israel is invented as is theeponym of Aram by biblical scribessup2sup1

Because the Aramean king Ben-Hadad defeated Israel following a bribesent by Asa the pressure on Judah should have stopped 1Kgs 1520 mentionsthe Aramean conquest of IjonTell ed-Dibbin (coord OIG 20523054) DanTellel-Qāḍī (coord OIG 21122948) Abel-bet-maachaTell Ābil el-Qamḥ (coord OIG20452962) the whole sea region of Kinneret and the entire land of NaphtaliWith many others I have argued elsewhere that this does not reflect the situationin the early ninth century but rather in the second half of the ninth centuryunder the Aramean Hazael or even ndash since 1Kgs 1520 is drawn from 2Kgs1529 ndash in the eighth century under Tiglath-pileser IIIsup2sup2 This is supported bythe archaeological record which cannot be unfolded here

Coming to Baasharsquos coup drsquoetat we have to acknowledge the combination ofstandardized wording and supposed detailed information Baasha started a rev-olution against Jeroboamrsquos son Nadab ( אשעבוילערשקיו ) and killed him at Gibbe-thon ( ןותבגבאשעבוהכיו 1Kgs 1527) After becoming king he struck down all theoffspring of the house of Jeroboam ( םעבריתיב־לכ־תאהכה 1Kgs 1529) Further in-formation is given on Baasharsquos ancestryWhile his fatherrsquos name היחא־ןב is incon-spicuous (1Kgs 2122 2Kgs 99) the Hebrew רכששיתיבל (1Kgs 1527) is odd itpoints to a place named Beth-Issachar or a family named Issachar ratherthan to the region of the tribe in the north Strikingly except for Ezra 236Neh 739 the construction PN+ תיבל +PN is not used elsewhere This may be thereason why the Vaticanus has ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον Βελααν instead of רכששיתיבל TheAntiochene text in contrast gives evidence for the variant ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον Βεδ-δαμα τοῦ Ἰσσαχαρ Whether this has to be taken as the oldest variant does nothave to be decided here Be that as it may the additional information preventsthe reader from identifying Baasharsquos father with the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite(1Kgs 1129ndash30 1215 142 4) There has been much discussion on the specifica-

See the lengthy arguments in Frevel ldquoBen Hadad Irdquo See Frevel Geschichte Israels 195 id ldquoBen Hadad Irdquo Angelika Berlejung ldquoNachbarn Ver-wandte Feinde und Gefaumlhrten die lsquoAramaumlerrsquo im Alten Testamentrdquo in The Arameans Chaldeansand Arabs in Babylonia and Palestine in the First Millennium BC ed Angelika Berlejung andMichael P Streck (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2013) 72ndash73


tion that Baasha slayed Nadab in Gibbethon while the king of Israel besieged thecity which is said to be ldquoPhilistinerdquo ( םיתשלפלרשא ) This expression is attestedonly once more in 1Kgs 1615 suggesting that the siege of Nadab was not success-ful at all The narrative gives the impression that Baasha was part of Nadabrsquosarmy and that he usurped the throne After gaining power as happens laterwith Jehu (2Kgs 1011) and particularly Zimri (1Kgs 1612) he killed all membersof the house of Nadab (1Kgs 1527) Gibbethon the Assyrian Gabbutunu is locat-ed in the vicinity of Gezer either identified with Tell el-MelatTell Mālāt (coordOIG 13741405) or less probably Ras Abū Ḥamīd (coord OIG 13981456)sup2sup3 Striking-ly a siege of Gibbethon is mentioned on the eve of Omrirsquos coup in 1Kgs 1615Omri and the people of Israel besieged Gibbethon while Zimri slayed Elah theson of BaashaWhen Omri heard about this he broke off the siege of Gibbethonand besieged Tirzah instead (1Kgs 1617) The two notes on Gibbethon are part ofa Deuteronomistic retribution-scheme and are obviously related to each otherAt least one if not both of the notes was created for the purpose of correspond-ence While it is not in principle impossible that in the face of changing Phil-istine power (including the decline of Ekron as the leading Philistine city)there were military struggles between ldquothe Philistinesrdquoand Nadab in Gibbethonsup2⁴(which was perhaps controlling the trade routes to the coast) it is not very likely1Kgs 1527 mentions that Nadab laid siege to Gibbethon with the whole of Israel( ןותבג־לעםירצלארשי־לכו ) The motif resembles the pointed participation of thepeople in Omrirsquos revolt where it makes perfect sense in legitimizing Omri In1Kgs 1527 it is a borrowed motif

The information on Baasharsquos illegitimate accession to the throne is nowcrisscrossed by the concluding comment about Baasha in 1Kgs 1533 which isplaced after the doublet of the war-note in v 32 Whether Baasha conspired tooverthrow Nadab (1Kgs 1527ndash28) in Gibbethon or whether he accessed thethrone more or less legitimately in 1Kgs 1533 is open for discussion (and a fas-cinating topic) which cannot be unfolded here But the composition as a whole

The localization follows Stefan Timm ldquoDie territoriale Ausdehnung des Staates Israel zurZeit der Omridenrdquo ZDPV 96 (1980) 35 Ed Noort Die Seevoumllker in Palaumlstina (Kampen KokPharos 1994) 41 For Ras Abū ḤamīdHumeid see Steven M Ortitz ldquoGibbethonrdquo in EerdmansDictionary of the Bible ed David Noel Freedman (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 2000) 500ndash501Volkmar Fritz ldquoDas erste Buch der Koumlnigerdquo in Zuumlrcher Bibelkommentar Altes Testament 101(Zuumlrich TVZ 1996) 155 Manfred Goumlrg ldquoGibbetonrdquo in Neues Bibellexikon 1 ed Manfred Goumlrgand Bernhard Lang (Duumlsseldorf Patmos Verlag 2001) 859 John L Peterson ldquoGibbethon(Place name)rdquo in Anchor Bible Dictionary ed David Noel Freedman (New York Doubleday1992) 1006ndash1007 Carl S Ehrlich Philistines in Transition a History from ca 1000ndash730 BCE (Leiden Brill1996) 66ndash68


casts doubt on Baasharsquos coup drsquoeacutetat I support Šandarsquos astute view that thewhole chapter of 1Kgs 15 is more formulaic than it is historic ldquoDas ganze Kapitelist eine Verquickung von Formeln des R deuteronomistischen Phrasen und anwenigen Stellen auch von Worten der alten Quellen Es ist ein Werk des Rrdquosup2⁵In sum the revolt of Baasha ndash at least in its portrayal in 1Kgs 15 ndash is drawnfrom other biblical sources

33 Zimri-Tibni-Omri

We will also not engage in speculation about the Omri-Tibni-Zimri entanglementhere although the alliteration of names is as suspicious as the rival kingdom ofTibni (1Kgs 1621) is enigmatic All names appear to be hypocoristic forms ofYahwistic names While Zimri (ldquoMy praise is Yahrdquo) and Omri (ldquoMy life is Yahrdquo)are positive nominal-sentence-names Tibni can be read in parallel to Omrias a mocking name denoting either ldquoscarecrowrdquo (from ןבת ldquostraw chaffrdquowith al-lusion to רמע ldquobind sheaves clamp of earsrdquo) or ldquocopy piecerdquo (from הנב or תינבתldquoto buildrdquo ldquolikeness copyrdquo)sup2⁶ The legitimation of the military officer Omri bythe people as an opponent to Zimri who staged a revolt against the alcoholicElah makes Omri on the one hand a hero On the other hand Omrirsquos takeoverseems plausiblesup2⁷ if Zimrirsquos act was judged a villainous regicide by the people1Kgs 169 classifies Zimrirsquos act as a coup by using the phrase וילערשקיו Alreadythis note introduces the opposition between Zimri and Omri since both are armyofficersWhile Zimri is a commander of half the kingrsquos chariots (1Kgs 169) Omriis a commander of the army (1Kgs 1616) The subtle ironic difference makessense because Omri overpowers Zimri King Elah the son of Baasha is de-nounced as unable to lead Israel because he drinks alcohol excessively in Tirzah( רוכשהתשהצרתבאוהו 1Kgs 169) in the house of Arzah the senior official of thepalace This ironic description proves him incompetent to govern not only in themoment but during the entire two years of his reign Zimri then kills all themembers of the royal family and of the reigning party in Tirzah (1Kgs 1611)

Albert Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Muumlnster Aschendorf 1911) 395 See Martin Noth Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Na-mengebung (Hildesheim Olms 1966) 232 Dubovskyacute Northern Kingdom 323 sees ldquoseveral reasons to conclude that the ancient scribesdid not classify it as a coup drsquoeacutetatrdquo which makes the evaluation difficult from a historical stand-point The parallel to the Jehu coup is obvious Both have the same angle of evaluation so that Itend to go with the first part of Dubovskyacutersquos quote that ldquoOmrirsquos ascension to the throne bears sev-eral signs of a coup drsquoeacutetatrdquo (323)


This is emphasized with the formulaic ריקבתשמ ldquoevery malerdquo (lit ldquoanyone whois pissing at the wallrdquo) which is used in the context of regicide (1Sam 2522 341Kgs 1410 2121 2Kgs 98) The extermination is emphasized with the phraseldquoany kinsmen and any friendrdquo ( והערווילאגו ) which is unique in this context How-ever to attribute the end of the house of Baasha to Zimri a monarch of onlyseven days is to relieve Omri from regicide and such a notion would most likelyhave originated in annals from the North Omri battles in Gibbethon against thePhilistines (see above) and is thus presented as ldquodefenderrdquo of Israel Even theDeuteronomistic fulfillment of the prophecy of the prophet Jehu (1Kgs 161ndash412ndash 13) makes the Zimri episode suspicious His reign of seven days as well ashis suicide in Tirzah is construed

The rival kingdom of Tibni has no reason to exist and sounds strange It de-liberately gets no regnal evaluation formula and yet it might still have been his-torical However the reference to Tibni emphasizes the basso continuo of thechaos disorientation and ungovernability of the North

34 Jehu

While there was no doubt about the account of Jehursquos act of regicide whichlaunched the Nimshide dynasty (2Kgs 9ndash 10) the discovery of an extra-biblicalorthostat with an Aramaic inscription from Tel Dan in 1993 changed the situationcompletelysup2⁸ In the most probable reconstruction the author of the inscription(most likely the Aramean king Hazael) claims to have murdered both the Israel-ite king ldquoJehoramrdquoand the King of the house of David ldquoAhaziahurdquo In contrast toHazaelrsquos claim the Bible ascribes the murder of these two kings (supposedlyboth Omridessup2⁹ waging war together in Ramoth-Gilead against the Arameans)to Jehu who usurped the throne of Joram and established his own dynasty(henceforth the Jehuite Dynasty) in the kingdom of Israel Following 2Kgs924ndash27 Jehu is the one who eliminated the last Omrides in Samaria and in Jer-

Shuichi Hasegawa ldquoThe Historiographical Background for Jehursquos Claim as the Murderer ofJoram and Ahaziahrdquo AJBI 37 (2011) 5ndash 17 Frevel Geschichte Israels 110 The inscription waspublished by Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh ldquoAn Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel DanrdquoIEJ 43 (1993) 81‒98 id ldquoThe Tel Dan Inscription a New Fragmentrdquo IEJ 45 (2015) 1‒18 Themost recent discussion of the find context is Merja Alanne Tel Dan An Archaeological and Bib-lical Study of the City of Dan from the Iron Age II to the Hellenistic Period (PhD thesis University ofHelsinki 2017) For this assumption see Frevel Geschichte Israels 159


usalemsup3⁰ Many attempts have been made to reconcile the Aramaic inscriptionwith the Bible However they mostly evince a harmonizing tendency or the effortto maintain the Biblersquos truthsup3sup1

Who was then the ldquorealrdquomurderer of Joram and Ahaziah There is an on-going discussion about whether the Aramean king Hazael is the mastermind be-hind the coup drsquoeacutetat and whether he installed Jehu as Aramean vassal king inSamaria (and Joash in Jerusalem) after the victory over Israel and the killingof these kingssup3sup2 The issue becomes complicated if one compares the Assyriansources that mention the tribute of Jehu the man of Bit-Ḫumri being paid toShalmaneser III in his eighth regal year 841 BCEsup3sup3 This would seem to excludethe possibility that he was an Aramean vassal On the one hand this may dem-onstrate that the Assyrians saw in Jehu a continuation of the Omride dynasty Onthe other hand the tribute shows clearly that Jehu was not an Aramean puppetat that timeWe do not know much about the first years of Jehursquos reign and howhe behaved in foreign affairs after he gained power It is still possible that Jehuwas installed as an Aramean agent or vassal by Hazael (who killed Joram byhimself or with his army) or that the Jehu coup was integrated immediately inthe Aramean foreign policy strategy which failed under pressure from Shalma-neser III However this remains mere speculation Following the general tenden-cy of denouncing the North in the biblical record and considering the characterof the story in 2Kgs 9ndash 10 stylizing this as an intra-Israelite development is per-haps too easy Following Edward Lipiński 2Kgs 828 may also give a clue for Ha-zael as the real wrong-doersup3⁴ Although the Tel Dan inscription cannot decide is-sues it casts doubt on the portrayal of a Nimshide coup drsquoeacutetat as a militaryputsch which is parallel to the other revolts described in the Book of Kings

For the killing of Athaliah as part of the Jehu coup see Frevel Geschichte Israels 159ndash62 See Hasegawa ldquoBackgroundrdquo 9 See positively eg William M Schniedewind ldquoTel Dan Stela New Light on Aramaic andJehursquos Revoltrdquo BASOR 302 (1996) 85 in contrast Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Story of Jehursquos Rebel-lion Hazaelrsquos Inscription and the Biblical Narrativerdquo IEJ 56 (2006) 162ndash63 id ldquoThree Notesof the Aramaic Inscription from Tel Danrdquo IEJ 50 (2000) 102ndash 103 For discussion see Frevel Ge-schichte Israels 216 Jonathan Miles Robker The Jehu Revolution A Royal Tradition of the North-ern Kingdom and Its Ramifications (Berlin De Gruyter 2012) 219ndash24 In addition to the Black Obelisk (2113F) see also the Annals Calah Bulls (2113C) MarbleSlab (2113D) Kurbarsquoil Statue (2113E) cf Hallo and Younger The Context of Scripture vol 2267ndash70 For tribute in general see Juumlrgen Baumlr Der assyrische Tribut und seine DarstellungEine Untersuchung zur imperialen Ideologie im neuassyrischen Reich (Neukirchen-Vluyn Neu-kirchener Verlag 1996) Edward Lipiński The Aramaeans Their Ancient History Culture Religion (Leuven Peeters2000) 379ndash80


Jehursquos accession definitely remains illegitimate but it may not be evaluated as asign of intrinsic instability in the Northern Kingdom

35 Shallum

With Shallumrsquos coup drsquoetat in 2Kgs 1510 we enter the ldquolast days of the kings ofIsraelrdquoThis revolt against Zechariah the last member of the Jehuite dynasty andthe son of Jeroboam II who reigned for only six months (2Kgs 158) is also dif-ficult to evaluate from a historiographic perspective On the one hand it is plau-sible that the royal succession after the successful reign of Jeroboam II may havebeen accompanied by turmoil and crisis One would expect nothing else in tur-bulent times and under the shadow of growing pressure from the Assyrians likeTiglath-pileser III who ascended the throne in 745 BCE Hence the short reigns ofShallum and Menahem are reasonable in general On the other hand some is-sues of chronology and geography within these accounts cast doubt on the integ-rity of the Deuteronomistic report In 2Kgs 1510 we find the same phraseology asin the revolts before ויתחתךלמיווהתימיוםע־לבקוהכיושבי־ןבםלשוילערשקיו ldquoShal-lum the son of Jabesh conspired against him and struck him down at Ibleamand killed him and reigned in his steadrdquo The peculiarities start with thename or origin of the king Although the name is followed by a patronym( ־ןב ) the name of his father can also be read as an indication of provenanceAll other attestations of שבי Ιαβις are related to the city in Transjordan albeitusually followed by דעלג Miller and Hayes suggest a metathesis and take theEphraimite town Jasib (Yāsūf coord OIG 17261865) as the hometown of Shal-lumsup3⁵ (although none of the ancient versions attest such a metathesis) Thecity of Jabesh in Transjordan can be identified with either Tell Abū Charaz (coordOIG 20612007) or Tell el-Maqlūb (coord OIG 21442011)sup3⁶ Taking into accountthe biblical characterization (Judg 219ndash 14 1Sam 111ndash 10 3111) it is a specialplace from which separatist ambitions in critical situations are quite probableReplacing the fatherrsquos name with the city Jabesh would then parallel in a waythe revolt of Shallum with the coup of Pekah who is said to be accompanied byldquofifty men of the Gileaditesrdquo (2Kgs 1525) That there was turmoil in the important

James Maxwell Miller and John H Hayes A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (LouisvilleWestminster John Knox Press 2006 2nd edition) 376 For discussion see Erasmus Gass ldquoJabeschrdquo in Das Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Inter-net (wwwwibilexde) 2010 (httpswwwbibelwissenschaftdestichwort21995 last access 01122017) and on Tell el-Maqlūb Volkmar Fritz ldquoDas zweite Buch der Koumlnigerdquo in Zuumlrcher Bibel-kommentar Altes Testament 102 (Zuumlrich TVZ 1998) 84ndash85


transregional zone of Gilead under Aramean control since the days of Jehu (2Kgs1032) and most probably under pressure as transition zone in the eighth centuryBCE (cf 2Kgs 1529) is quite imaginable However these textual and historicalspeculations cannot be based on further details

Following the Masoretic Text Shallum batters Zechariah םע־לבק which is pe-culiar and transliterated in the Septuagint as καὶ Κεβλααμ This text treats Ke-blaam as a companion Keblaam is described in the Syrian text as lsquohis fatherrsquoconspiring with Shallumsup3⁷ The odd phrase םע־לבק is often translated ldquobeforethe peoplerdquo thus signifying the revolt and murder as a public affair Howeverthe phrase םע־לבק would have been used only here in this way and one has tostick to a late Aramaic adverb לבק ldquobeforerdquo to make sense of it Instead the An-tiochene text reads ἐν rsquoΙεβλαάμ (ldquoin Ibleamrdquo)sup3⁸ and is probably older than the MTThus the emendation of the text in Ibleam is one option that removes one oddityand uncovers another one The site Ibleam is located in the direct neighborhoodof JeninEn Ganin (Ḫirbet Bel‛ame coord OIG 17772058sup3⁹) between Dothan andJezreel What makes this solution easy to dismiss is the fact that Ibleam at theascent of Gur ( םעלבי־תארשארוג־הלעמב 2Kgs 927) is the place where Jehu issaid to have slain Ahaziah⁴⁰ From a literary perspective the Nimshide reign isframed by murder and ldquorevengerdquo in Ibleam which absolutely makes sense inthe composition of Kings (see 2Kgs 1512 ldquoThis was the promise of the LORDthat he gave to Jehu lsquoYour sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth gen-erationrsquo And so it happenedrdquo) Again the composition suggests that these reg-icides are not only understood as ldquohistoricalrdquo facts but also as a structural de-vice

36 Menahem

According to the biblical chronology Menahem usurped the throne after Shallumhad reigned for only one month In contrast to Shallum who was from Transjor-dan Menahemrsquos origin is attributed to Tirzah the former residence of the kingsof Israel which has to be located in Tell el-Fār‛ah (North) (coord OIG 18231882)

This is all the more evident when the order is reversed and the verbs are in plural see the listof manuscripts in Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 327 This seems more or less due to the mis-reading of ιεβλααμ Marcos and Saiz Texto Antioqueno 126 See Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige 84 For the itinerary see Shuichi Hasegawa Aram and Israel during the Jehuite Dynasty (BerlinDe Gruyter 2012) 32ndash33 148ndash49


Tirzah is the place where Omri started his revolution with a siege (1Kgs 1617)⁴sup1and Baasha Elah and Zimri resided (1Kgs 1521 33 166 8 15 23)⁴sup2 The onlyattestation we have to Menahems coup is the biblical text The phrasing ofthis passage is slightly different compared to similar accounts ידג־ןבםחנמלעיו

ויתחתךלמיווהתימיוןורמשבשיבי־ןבםולש־תאךיוןורמשאביוהצרתמ Menahem theson of Gadi came up from Tirzah and came to Samaria and he struck down Shal-lum the son of Jabesh in Samaria and slew him and reigned in his steadrdquo (2Kgs1514) Besides the absence of the catch-phrase וילערשקיו the order of notes isstriking Verse 15 presents the evaluation formula of Shallum referring back tohis conspiracy in a formulaic expression which is almost identical to 1Kgs1620 and the conspiracy of Zimri Verse 16 then inserts an זא sentence with re-gard to Menahem before the introductory synchronism of his reign This impor-tant ldquoinformationrdquo introduces Menahem with incredible brutality without spe-cifying when ldquoat that timerdquo was It may have been before during or after hisrevolution

Whether Menahem was part of the royal family of the Nimshides or a mem-ber of the old Manassite elite in Tirzah (cf Gaddi as representative of the Man-assite tribe in Num 1311) or perhaps even coming from Transjordan (ldquothe Ga-diterdquo) is open for discussion⁴sup3 If the latter is the case and ידג־ןב has to beinterpreted as a clan name (cf 2Sam 2336) or indicates the region (1Sam 137

דגץרא 245)⁴⁴ the origin of Menahem becomes parallel to the origin of Shallumfrom Jabesh (see above) This descent from Gilead is perhaps deliberately relatedIf so it is also most relevant that his son was killed by 50 men from Gilead (2Kgs1525) Gilead in northern Transjordan is presented as a region in turmoil (per-haps following its eventful history as part of the northern state in the ninthand eighth century BCE) It may reflect a pro-Assyrian position arguing that

Note that this also fits the above-mentioned framing idea of Ibleam for the Nimshides and issupported further by the parallel of 1Kgs 1620 with 2Kgs 1515 One gets the impression that in-cidents and locations are put nicely together to emphasize divine providence For the ldquoTirzah polityrdquo as a first cluster of power see Frevel Geschichte Israels 154 for amore biblically based portrait of Tirzah see Israel Finkelstein The Forgotten Kingdom the Ar-chaeology and History of Northern Israel (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2013) 66For the archaeological record see also the overview of id ldquoTell El-Far‛ah (Tirzah) and theearly days of the Northern Kingdomrdquo RB 119 (2012) 331ndash46 focusing on Iron I and IIB whilenot discussing the Iron IIBC stratum VIIe Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings a New Translation with Introduction and Com-mentary (New Haven CT Yale University Press 1988) 171 This is quite possible even if the conception of twelve tribes with Gad in Transjordan is most-ly post-exilic


only in subservience to Assur can a political connection between ldquothe Gileadrdquoand Israel be perpetuated

If ידג־ןב is not meant to link Shallum and Menahem or does not reflect Trans-jordanian political background realities Gad is the fatherrsquos name⁴⁵ and Mena-hem probably has a connection to Tirzah One may speculate that Menahem isa partisan of the former Samarian elite who retired to the old regnal quarterin Tirzah when Shallum defeated the Nimshides and killed members of theroyal house It makes a lot of sense that the Samarian elite was superseded bythe Shallum party and may thus have fled to the old regnal quarter in Tirzahabout 85 miles east of Samaria to organize a counter-revolution

Dubovskyacute points to the palace building 148 in Stratum VIId and to three pat-rician houses (no 327 328 710) as possible evidence ldquothat just before the col-lapse of Samaria the city of Tirzah reappeared as a new rival on the Israelite po-litical scenerdquo⁴⁶ He argues that Tirzah was destroyed by fire during the reign ofOmri and that this forced him to move the capital to Samaria Tirzah then ldquodis-appears hellip from the biblical account only to reappear again in the account ofMenahemrsquos usurpationrdquo⁴⁷ In attributing Stratum VIId to the last days of the king-dom of Israel Dubovskyacute follows Alain Chambon Since the significant prosperityof Stratum VIIb already postdates the move of the capital to Samaria by theOmrides in the ninth century this prosperous phase may have been ended byHazael⁴⁸ After a short abandonment Tirzah was rebuilt in Stratum VIIc whichhas to be taken together more or less with Stratum VIId Stratum VIId then ldquocon-sists of a large palatial complex in the north medium-size domestic units in thecenter and smaller houses in the south This architectural sequence seems torepresent a three-tier hierarchy of citizens a ruling class wealthy familiesand poorer familiesrdquo⁴⁹ The pottery of Stratum VIIc and VIId ldquorepresents an

For the element Gad in personal names see Nahman Avigad and Banjamin Sass Corpus ofWest-Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1997) 491 Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 332 Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reign before the Assyrian Invasion (2 Kings 1514ndash16)rdquo in Lit-erature as Politics Politics as Literature Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machi-nist ed David S Vanderhooft and Abraham Winitzer (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2013) 36 See Finkelstein ldquoTell El-Far‛ahrdquo334 The attribution of the destruction level to Omri has pro-duced various theories of rivalry between Samaria and Tirzah See eg Bob Becking ldquoMena-chemrsquos Massacre of Tiphsat At the Crossroads of Grammar and Memory (2 Kings 1516)rdquo in His-tory Memory Hebrew Scriptures A Festschrift for Ehud Ben Zvi ed Ian D Wilson and Diana VEdelman (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2015) 20 Ze‛ev Herzog and Lily Singer-Avitz ldquoSub-Dividing the Iron Age IIA in Northern Israel A Sug-gested Solution to the Chronological Debaterdquo TA 332 (2006) 163ndash95 175


8th-century assemblagerdquo⁵⁰ parallel to Megiddo IVA which dates to the end of theeighth century⁵sup1 Israel Finkelstein has recently put Tell el-Fār‛ah Stratum VIId inthe very short period between 74030ndash20⁵sup2 The eighth century heyday is parallelto other cities in the North However to attribute these structures to Menahemrsquosagency and to imagine ldquotensions between Samaria and Tirzah since Tirzah be-came a military base for a new revoltrdquo⁵sup3 is elaborate and remains mostly theoret-ical

A further detail is noted in 2Kgs 1516 ldquoAt that time Menahem sacked Tiph-sah all who were in it and its territory from Tirzah on because they did not openit to him he sacked it He ripped open all the pregnant women in itrdquo There aregrammatical and exegetical problems with this verse which have already beendiscussed at length by Bob Becking and Peter Dubovskyacute Let me briefly expoundon four issues

a) The preposition ןמ

One of the many problems of 2Kgs 1516 is the understanding of the ןמ in הצרתמ which is usually translated to mean that Tirzah was the base from which Mena-hem sacked Tappuah or Tiphsah (ldquofrom Tirzah onrdquo) If the הצרתמ which imme-diately follows the description of the first הכנ -action and its three תא -objects ismeant locally ldquofrom Tirzahrdquo then one would expect a subsequent דע (ldquofrom Tir-zah to helliprdquo) As an alternative to this understanding Dubovskyacute suggested either toread the הצרתמ as a declaration of Menahemrsquos origin (thus doubling the הצרתמ inv 14) or as ldquofrom Tirzahrdquomeaning that Menahem ldquoattacked hellip (the one who was)from Tirzahrdquo⁵⁴ While admitting ldquoinsurmountable syntactical difficultiesrdquo⁵⁵ withthe latter proposal it can be ruled out For the first interpretation there is noneed to mention the Menahemrsquos origin again Bob Becking added two furtherreadings of ןמ namely a causal ldquobecause of Tirzahrdquo and a comparative ldquomorethan Tirzahrdquo⁵⁶ Both remain problematic because they presume a context that

Herzog and Singer-Avitz ldquoSub-Dividingrdquo 176 Lily Singer-Avitz ldquoThe Pottery of Megiddo Strata IIIndash II and a Proposed Subdivision of theIron IIC Period in Northern Israelrdquo BASOR 372 (2014) 123 134 Finkelstein Forgotten Kingdom 69 Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrdquo 38 For the rivalry between Samaria and Tirzah see already fn 49and below Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrdquo 32 Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrdquo 33 Becking ldquoMenachemrdquo 20


is not mentioned in the text They shall elliptically refer back to what had beendone to Tirzah that is Omrirsquos siege on the city and the suicide of Zimri (1Kgs1618) For Becking this is a counterstrike against the memory of a defeatedgroup in the Northern Kingdom However the brutality of this event and itsplace in the collective memory as rivalry between Tirzah and Samaria remainsonly a guess (see below) 2Kgs 1516 is not a ldquorevenge for Omrirsquos deeds and do-ingsrdquo⁵⁷ In sum I agree with Dubovskyacute that the only possible reading is the loca-tional one that Menahem is going out from Tirzah Thus it becomes all the moreimportant to understand the relation of Tirzah and Tiphsah (see c)

b) Menahem the ripper

The atrocious act of ripping up pregnant women aims at razing out a populationsince women in childbirth and offspring are killed alike It is attested in biblicalpassages (2Kgs 812 Hos 141 Amos 113 cf Isa 1316 18 Hos 1014) and rarely inextra-biblical sources⁵⁸ This is expressed by the use of the double verbs הכנ and

עקב (which are combined only in this verse) In biblical texts this cruel war crimeoccurs rarely Amos 113 accuses Ammon of having ripped up pregnant women inGilead to enlarge their territory ( םלובג־תאביחרה ) If Tiphsah could be attributed toTransjordan Menahem (the Gadite) could have been taking revenge for thisAmmonite cruelty But the location is almost excluded (see below c) The othertwo instances of ripping pregnant women in the Bible relate to the ArameansIn 2Kgs 812 Elisha weeps and prophesies that Hazael will dash little onesand rip the pregnant women of Israel This corresponds to Hos 141 If we takeTiphsah at face value and locate it in Syria then it may be the north-easternedge of the Aramean empire which is addressed here Menahem then maytake revenge for the Aramean cruelty committed by Hazael (2Kgs 812) Butthis implicit connection is also very elaborate

In v 15 the double הכנ is strikingWhile the first clearly has Menahem as thesubject the second in the יכ -sentence remains grammatically obscure It has noobject and no clear subject The subject could be Menahem but also the same

Becking ldquoMenachemrdquo 20 See Mordechai Cogan ldquolsquoRipping Open Pregnant Womenrsquo in the Light of an Assyrian Ana-loguerdquo Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 103 (1983) 755ndash56 Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoRippingOpen Pregnant Arab Women Reliefs in Room L of Ashurbanipalrsquos North PalacerdquoOr 78 (2009)394ndash419


subject as in חתפאליכ ⁵⁹ Strikingly most translations change the subject with thenarrative ךיו But if this is not the case the subject of עקב ldquohe rippedrdquo opens upand does not necessarily have to be Menaham If the subject of חתפ is not the cityas it is usually assumed to be but should be read as ldquohe did not openrdquo (a mas-culine singular referring to a person) Hazael comes to mind particularly on theliterary level (2Kgs 812) Although it is the last and only other passage in theBook of Kings which uses also the verb עקב with הרה this might be too far-fetch-ed If the atrocious act by Menahem is not considered to be revenge the solutionmay perhaps be found in the obscurity of ldquoTiphsahrdquo

c) Tiphsah

Tiphsah is mentioned only once more in 1Kgs 54 (Engl 1Kgs 424) as the north-ern frontier of the Solomonic empire It is usually identified with a city TapsakeΘαψακος or Θαψα latin Thapsa[cus] close to Carchemish at the river Euphratesan important caravanserai identified either with Qal‛at el-Dibse or Qal‛at Naǧm⁶⁰ldquoTifsach war eine wichtige Karawanenstation am Eufrat die in pers Zeit wohlauch einen bedeutenden Grenzuumlbergang von der transeufratischen in die zwi-schenstromlaumlndische Satrapie markierterdquo⁶sup1 The siege of a city on the westernshore of the Euphrates-knee seems very unlikely for Menahem In acknowledg-ing the ldquotoo far away locationrdquo the ancient versions read Θερσα Tirzah (LXX20 B A Ldagger) θαιρα (Adagger) or ταφωε (Ldagger) Tappuah⁶sup2 With the emendation of thetext Menahemrsquos crime comes closer to the core territory of the state of Israel Tir-

Although the LXX has a plural ἤνοιξαν the subject is not necessarily the city of Θερσα (orTiphsah) as Bob Becking assumed However the city is the most probable subject even inthe Hebrew text because the suffixes of הילובג (τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ τὰ ὅρια αὐτῆς) and

היתורהה refer to Tiphsah See Wolfgang Roumlllig ldquoThapsacusrdquo in Brillrsquos New Pauly ed Hubert Cancik and HelmuthSchneider (httpdxdoiorg1011631574-9347_bnp_e1206490 last access 21122017) Othmar Keel Max Kuumlchler and Christoph Uehlinger Orte und Landschaften der Bibel vol 1Geographisch-geschichtliche Landeskunde (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1984) 234For an update to the archaeology of Carchemish see Nicolograve Marchetti ldquoThe 2014 joint Turco-Ital-ian Excavations at KarkemishrdquoKazi Sonuccedillari Toplantisi 37 (2016) 363ndash80 and id ldquoThe CulticDistrict of Karkemish in the Lower Townrdquo in LrsquoArcheologia del Sacro e LrsquoArcheologie del CultoSabratha Ebla Ardea Lanuvio ed Paolo Matthiae (Rome Bardi Edizioni 2016) 373ndash414 For the various traditions see Dubovskyacute Menahemrsquos Reign 31ndash32 for the Greek manuscriptssee Alan England Brooke Norman McLean and Henry St John Thackeray ed The Old Testa-ment in Greek According to the Text of Codex Vaticanus Supplemented from Other Uncial Manu-scripts with a Critical Apparatus Containing the Variants of the Chief Ancient Authorities for theText of the Septuagint (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2010)


zah does not make sense because Menahem came originally from Tirzah andwould have destroyed ldquohis hometownrdquo or the city where his action took its out-come (this may be the reason why Rahlfs reads Θαρσιλα) The Antiochene textΤαφώε is the Tappuah that is often favored in commentaries⁶sup3 Tappuah has tobe identified with Tell aš-ŠēḫAbū Zarad located about 20 km south of Tirzah⁶⁴at the border between Ephraim and Manasse (Josh 178) At first glance thismakes more sense if the given rationale חתפאליכ (ldquobecause he did not openrdquo)can be understood as a resistance against a reign of Menahem in the southWhether there was a greater anti-Assyrian sentiment in the southern part ofthe land or supporters of Shallum mounted an opposition against Menahem re-mains very speculative Miller and Hayes suggested that Tappuah is very close toa village named Jashib (Yāsūf coord OIG 17261865) in Ephraim which could bemisread from Jabesh the hometown of Shallum (see above) But why Tappuah ifthe revenge is actually directed against Jashib Maybe there is another possibilityto take Tiphsah metaphorically as will be elaborated in the next paragraph

d) Why this brutality

Does the reference mirror a struggle by the Israelite state for sovereignty in timesof hardship We come back to Bob Beckingrsquos idea that it may be ldquoan act of re-venge for Omrirsquos deeds and doingsrdquo referring ldquoback to the memory of a defeatedgroup within the Northern Kingdom which we rejected aboverdquo⁶⁵ This may pointin the right direction but Zimrirsquos suicide and Omrirsquos cruelty are in my under-standing already too far away in time to form the background to this referenceIt is rather the revolt of Shallum and the end of the Nimshide dynasty that can beread as the background to Menahemrsquos cruelty If Menahem was not a member ofthe Nimshide dynastic family he may nevertheless have been part of the elite

Karl Elliger ldquoStudien aus dem Deutschen Evangelischen Institut fuumlr Altertumswissenschaf-ten in Jerusalem 42 Die Grenze zwischen Ephraim und ManasserdquoZeitschrift des Deutschen Pal-aumlstina-Vereins 53 (1930) 265ndash309 292ndash93 See also Schoors Kingdoms of Israel and Judah 13Juumlrgen Werlitz Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Stuttgart Katholisches Bibelwerk 2002) 265 For the An-tiochene text see Marcos and Saiz Texto Antioqueno 126 For the identification with Tell aš-ŠēḫAbū Zarad (coord OIG 17191679) see Siegfried Mitt-mann ed Tuumlbinger Bibelatlas (Stuttgart Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft 2000) For the identifica-tion with Kirbet Beit Farr (A) (coord OIG 18481831) see Adam Zertal The Eastern Valleys and theFringes of the Desert vol 2 The Manasseh Hill Country Survey (Leiden Brill 2007) 112 443ndash44 Becking ldquoMenachemrdquo 20


That he was already a king by the grace of the Assyrian ruler (see below) isnot very likely if we rely upon the established chronological framework Tiglath-pileser III had not subdued Samaria in neither 743 nor 738 BCE⁶⁶ According tothe biblical chronology Menahemrsquos revolt took place around 748 BCE when theAssyrian presence under Aššur-nerari V was non-existent in the Southern Le-vant Menahem was certainly an Assyrian vassal and paid tribute to Pul onlyby 738 BCE⁶⁷ Pul is the throne name of Tiglath-pileser (assyr Tukulti-apil-Ešarra) after he ascended to the Babylonian throne in 729 BCE Thus naming Ti-glath-pileser III Pul is most probably an anachronism which attests to an edito-rial bias as the text was being produced⁶⁸

However when and how Menahem became king is open for discussion Theldquochronological conundrumrdquo (Kristin Weingart this volume) calls for caution asnot only the dates of Pekahrsquos reign are wrong The common date of 738 BCEfor the tribute as well as the ten-year duration of his reign are by no meansclear⁶⁹ Hayim Tadmor has argued that the tribute in 738 BCE was perhaps notthe only tribute Menahem paid and that the acknowledgment for the durationof his reign mentioned in 2Kgs 1519 ldquowas paid in 740 or even earlierrdquo⁷⁰ If sothe amount mentioned in the biblical text becomes also questionable in its rela-tion to the ldquosecondrdquo tribute in 738 BCE The tribute mentioned in 2Kgs 1519 isextraordinarily high but may not have been exaggerated since 1000 talents ofsilver are also mentioned in the Summary Inscription 4 18prime as the tribute ofHoshea who was installed by the Assyrians⁷sup1 Following Nadav Narsquoaman thevery high amount ldquofits the context of a heavy tribute paid by a newly installed

See Oswald Loretz and Walter Mayer ldquoPūlu ndash Tiglatpileser III und Menahem von Israel nachassyrischen Quellen und 2 Koumln 151920rdquo UF 22 (1990) 226ndash27 The tribute of Miniḫimme of Samerina (mMi-ni-hi-im-˹me˺ KURSa-˹me˺-ri-i-na-a-˹a˺) is listedtwice in the Calah Annals 13 10 and in the Iran-Stele IIIA 5 see Tadmor Inscriptions 66106 For the tribute list of Tiglath-pileser III and the 1000 talents of silver see further Bob Beck-ing The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill 1992) 4 and thediscussion below For other explanations see Hallo and Younger The Context of Scripture vol 2 285 and Loretzand Walter ldquoPūlu ndash Tiglatpileser IIIrdquo 221ndash31 See the discussion in Tadmor Inscriptions 274ndash76With the date 738 BCE I follow WeippertHistorisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament 288 whereas Loretz and Mayer ldquoPūlu ndash TiglatpileserIIIrdquo assume that Menahem paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III already in 743 BCE following thestudy of Edwin R Thiele whereas Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige 86 dates the tribute tothe year 740 BCE See also Kristin Weingartrsquos chapter in this volume Tadmor Inscriptions 276 Cogan and Tadmor II Kings 172 Tadmor Inscriptions 141 for the parallel cases of Hulli ofTabal and Metenna of Tyre see Tadmor Inscriptions 276


king in return for the recognition of the Assyrian kingrdquo⁷sup2 This parallel may sug-gest that Menahemrsquos ascension to the throne was illegitimate and perhaps relat-ed to Assyrian westward-expansion At the very least he bought Assyrian supportfor his rule (see below)

If the figures given in the Bible are correct but relate to an earlier tribute tothe Assyrian king Menahem either needed the help of the Assyrian power to en-force his powercampaign against the anti-Assyrian Shallum partisans or he wasindeed a king by the grace of the Assyrian king The ldquotext indicates that Tiglath-pileser intervened directly and personally to support the pro-Assyrian Menahemand to preserve his hold on the thronerdquo⁷sup3

Given that the relationship between the amount of the tribute paid and thepolitical status of the vassal was commonly known there is another possibilityto explain 2Kgs 1519 the figures for Menahemrsquos tribute are not historically cor-rect but the Deuteronomistic editor aware of this Assyrian practice adds inthis detail to paint Menahem as a wicked usurper

The brutality shown to Tiphsah is given as paradigmatic example of hiswickedness But this elaborate possibility is only theoretical

It is more probable that the figures are historically correct and Menahemwas seen as a usurper by Tiglath-pileser III The biblical chronology is perhapscorrupted and Menahem ascended the throne in Samaria in fact only in 738BCE or his tribute has to be dated earlier to 743ndash740 BCE⁷⁴ as earlier studieswere willing to assume This opens the window to the suggestion that perhapshe directed a rival monarchy from Tirzah in the years before accessing the throneillegitimately in Samaria This would fit the archaeological record of Tell el-Fār‛ah (North) presented above

The exceptional phrase ודיבהכלממהקיזחהלותאוידיתויהל ldquoto that his handmight be with him to strengthen his kingdom in his handrdquoas the ratio of the trib-ute may give another hint for the subjection of Menahem to Tiglath-pileser IIIand the suggestion of a rival kingdom of Menahem The phrase has two partswhich can be read as a doublet or even seen as evidence for a pleonasticstyle But since the LXX has only εἶναι τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ the secondpart ודיבהכלממהקיזחהל can be evaluated as a later gloss⁷⁵ Interestingly enoughthe phrase is attested also with Amaziah who erected a counter-kingdom in

Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaigns against Tyre and Israel (734ndash732 BCE)rdquoTA22 (1995) 275 with reference to Tadmor Inscriptions 276 Miller and Hayes History 377 See the discussion Loretz and Mayer ldquoPūlu ndash Tiglatpileser IIIrdquo 226 See Marvin A Sweeney I amp II Kings A Commentary (Louisville KT Westminster John KnowPress 2007) 373


Lachish and who killed his servants (2Kgs 145) and with Jehoram in the contextof the murder of his brothers (2Chr 214) By this the suspicion is nurtured thatMenahemrsquos accession was lsquospecialrsquo in a way It was irregular indeed and sup-ported by the Assyrians Perhaps it was two-tiered process and the secondstage may also have been dearly bought with a bribe put into the hands of Ti-glath-pileser III

If we push this speculation even further the enigmatic Tiphsah (given itsoriginal reading instead of Antiochene Ταφώε Tappuah) gives a hidden clueto the revenge on Samaria symbolizing the ideological transfer of Samaria in As-syrian realm (ldquobecause he had not openedrdquo the city for the Assyrians) Tiphsah isa border city at the Euphrates and beyond there is clearly Assyrian territory

The ldquopayment and other tributes must have drained the wealth of Israel bro-ken the economic power of Israel and financially ruined the Northern King-domrdquo⁷⁶ Menahem exacted the money from the people by imposing a tax onthe wealthy If the figures of the tribute are calculable and every rich man hadto pay 50 silver shekels as it is said in 2Kgs 1520 Menahem was in need of72000 rich people No matter how one looks at it the given numbers cannotbe sound Dubovskyacute has pointed to Lev 273 The idea of interpreting the figurestheologically perhaps goes in the right direction⁷⁷ Considering that this is abiased description of the North these details may be intended to devalue Mena-hemrsquos kingdom on an economic level Be that as it may the bribe did work andTiglath-pileser III withdrew ( ץראבםשדמע־אלו ) This is only half of the truth sincethe Assyrians were present shortly after this event at least in the 13th or 14th palucirc(see below) If the tribute of Menahem was meant to replace the anti-Assyrianpolicy of Shallum with the help of Tiglath-pileser III the state of Israel was trans-ferred into the second stage of vassalage

To sum up this in-depth historical discussion dealing with the scarcity ofinformation about Menahem has come to some conclusions which admittedlycannot be substantiated in terms of historical accuracy in contrast to ShallumMenahem seems to have taken a pro-Assyrian position Shortly after the anti-As-syrian Shallum destroyed the Nimshides and representatives of the ruling classhad gained power in Samaria he may have erected a rival kingdom in TirzahThis may have formed the background for the biblical chronology which attrib-utes a period of roughly ten years reign to him Perhaps with an act of extraor-

Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 340 Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 340 ליחהירובג־לכלע can also denote the leading elitewhich was allegedly in Samaria Is this an additional hidden hint for the ldquorevengerdquo-theoryagainst the anti-Assyrian party However this is mere theory and cannot be substantiated Wedo not know anything on the foreign policy of Shallum and a possible anti-Assyrian attitude


dinary brutality he expanded his power from Tirzah to Samaria For this verygambit he made use of the help of Tiglath-pileser III The anti-Assyrian partygrew mighty because of the heavy tribute he had to pay and they swept hisachievements away at the end of his reign or shortly after his death 2Kgs1522 says that he died naturally and was buried regularly but the successionto this throne may be more tumultuous as will be discussed below

37 Pekah

The similarity between the names Pekah and Pekahiah which differ only bytheir explicit theophoric elements and their patronyms is suspicious Howeverno other sources support the view that they are the same person As we havelearned already not all usurpers are named with explicit Yahwistic theophoricnames but we can find other indications that Pekahiah was conflated withPekah by the biblical authors Anyway there are some quite interesting detailsin the description of this penultimate regicide Pekah is said in 2Kgs 1525 tobe a captain שילש ndash a high officer of the reigning monarch or kingrsquos deputyTherefore the rebellion was kindled within the inner administration Thismakes a lot of sense considering the controversies surrounding foreign policyThe שילש is a high military οr administrative position (Ex 147 154 2Kgs 9251025) and is in 1Kgs 922 separated from the םידבע םירש המחלמהישנא andthe וישרפוובכרירש 2Kgs 72 17 19 suggests that שילש is the kingrsquos deputy Thenext detail is the location of the regicide like Shallum he is killed in Samariabut notably in the palace The ךלמה־תיבןומרא is part of the kingrsquos palace mostprobably the private rooms It is mentioned only once more in the Zimri con-spiracy in 1Kgs 1618 as the place where the king committed suicide Perhapsthis also points to the close relation between Pekahiah and Pekah On a textuallevel the similarity between the names of the king and his captain emphasizesthe close relationship between them In addition Dubovskyacute argues that this lo-cation is used to inform the reader that ldquoconspiracies intrigues and murders pe-netrated the whole kingdom not even the most protected place of the kingdom― the keep of the royal palace ― was safe enough to protect the king againstconspiratorsrdquo⁷⁸ Additionally the special place links the Pekah revolt to theZimri account In my understanding it is not meant to be especially climacticThe putsch is carried out by Pekah and fifty men of Gilead (2Kgs 1525) and fol-lowing the LXX these are fifty of four hundred (ἀπὸ τῶν τετρακοσίων) in total

Dubovskyacute ldquoNorthern Kingdomrdquo 328


Whether there is an official relationship between the usurper and these men isnot said they may be his combat-effective unit but then Pekah would be onlyone of many captains (ὁ τριστάτης) It is striking that the region of Gilead re-ceives special emphasis as it does in the revolts of Shallum and Menahem Asargued above Gilead was weak and had experienced frequent changes of sover-eignty between Israel the Arameans and the Assyrians⁷⁹ The region may havefelt the growing pressure of Tiglath-pileser in 735 BCE first and foremost Mostenigmatic is the reference to היראה־תאובגרא־תא which is usually translated asldquoalong with Argob and Ariehrdquo It is possible that these are two individualswho took part in the revolution (so LXX μετὰ τοῦ Αργοβ καὶμετὰ τοῦ Αρια καὶμετ᾽ αὐτοῦ πεντήκοντα ἄνδρες) or they are places where the revolution firstarose Argob is the name of the region of Bashan as noted in 1Kgs 413 andDeut 34 13ndash 14⁸⁰ This is purely speculative but it is striking that Transjordanianpower is employed with the details of his revolution Tiglath-pileser III raided Gi-lead to gain control over the Transjordanian trade route⁸sup1 This may have preced-ed the conquest of Cis-Jordan described at the end of the reign of Pekah in 2Kgs1529 Another possibility is that the anti-Assyrian party toppled the reign in Sa-maria when Menahem died⁸sup2 Be that as it may the annexation of northern ter-ritory is connected to Pekah in the biblical text (2Kgs 1529) The text mentions amilitary campaign of Tiglath-pileser who is named here רסאלפתלגת for the firsttime (cf 2Kgs 167 10 for further references and 2Kgs 1519 for Pul) This campaignis usually meant to be the 12th (ana māt Pilišta) 734 BCE or more probably the13th and 14th palucirc of Tiglath-pileser III (733ndash732 BCE) (ana māt Damašeq)⁸sup3 It

This is also the background of the Aramean conspiracy in the revolt of Pekah (cf 2Kgs 1537)cf Miller and Hayes History 376 I will not discuss the so-called Syro-Ephraimite war in thischapter but see Frevel Geschichte Israels 240 See Johannes Bremer ldquoArgobrdquo in Das Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (wwwwibi-lexde) 2014 (httpswwwbibelwissenschaftdestichwort13757 last access 03122017) See Meinders Dijkstra and Karel Vriezen ldquoThe Assyrian Province of Gilead and the lsquoMyth ofthe Empty Landrsquordquo in Exploring the Narrative Jerusalem and Jordan in the Bronze and Iron AgesPapers in Honour of Margreet Steiner ed Eveline van der Steen Jeanette Boertien and NoorMulder-Hymans (London Bloomsbury 2015) 6ndash7 See Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige 85 For the dating Weippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament 288 map in Cogan andTadmor II Kings 180 Dubovskyacutementions that Transjordan was conquered in the 13th palucircwhichhe draws from Annals 23 and Summary Inscription 9 and 13 and the conquest of Ashtarot de-picted in Nimrud He proposes three phases coast ldquoTransjordan and epicentres (Damascus andIsrael)rdquo (Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaigns in 734ndash732 BCrdquo158) The province of Mag-idducirc was founded 733 BCE the province of Dimašqa in 732 BCE see the chart in Simo ParpolaldquoThe National and Ethnic Identity in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Assyrian Identity in Post-Em-pire Timesrdquo Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 18 (2004) 5ndash22 appendix II


is well known that the ldquohe reigned twenty yearsrdquo in 2Kgs 1527 contradicts thechronology in several ways most crucially the assumption that according tothe vassal-list of Tiglath-pileser III the pre-predecessor Menahem payed tributein ca 738 BCE (see above) Taking this for granted there is no time for Pekah(ass Paqaḫa) to reign twenty years even without Pekahiah in between⁸⁴ Bethat as it may the raid against Israel can best be placed in 734ndash732 BCE withinthe context of the annexation of Gaza and Damascus⁸⁵ If we are forced to decideit would fit our knowledge of the year 733 BCE best⁸⁶

The biblical text mentions the deportation of people and the conquest ofeight areas in the north ndash moving from cities (Ijon Abel-beth-maacah JanoahKedesh Hazor) to landscapes or regions (Gilead Galilee) and from north tosouth In adding the concluding element ילתפנץרא־לכ the list becomes differentNaphtali is not introduced by תאו and not determined by an article The phrase isattested only once more in 1Kgs 1520 to denote the territory taken by Ben-Hadadbut the latter appears to be dependent on 2Kgs 1530 (see above) To bring up ldquoallthe land of Naphtalirdquo after noting the cities in the Huleh valley is strange be-cause Ijon Abel-beth-maacah Kedesh Janoah and Hazor are all in the areawhich is commonly attributed to Naphtali This very fact has nourished specula-tion that either Naphtali or even the three regions of Gilead Galilee and Naph-tali are additions not least because they are not listed in the alleged geograph-ical order⁸⁷ The list starts close to the Litani river in the North with Ijon usuallyidentified with Tell Dibbin (coord OIG 20523054) then Abel-beth-maacah thegeographical ldquogaterdquo to Palestine Tell Ābil el-Qamḥ at the mouth of the Biqa val-ley (coord OIG 20452962) going south to Janoah which is not Yeno‛am 5 kmsouth from the outfall of the Sea of Galilee (coord OIG 19822354) but ratherTell en-NalsquoamehTell an-Na‛imah in the Huleh valley (coord OIG 20582868)The next city Kedesh is usually identified with Tel Qedesh northwest of theHuleh swamp (coord OIG 19972796) and the final city is Hazor identifiedwith Tell el-Qedaḥ (coord OIG 20352693) in the southwestern area of theHuleh basin From this view it is quite convincing to connect Galilee to thesouth but the text mentions Gilead first and Galilee second Scholars have

See Frevel Geschichte Israels 182ndash83 See Narsquoaman ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo 268ndash78 See Fritz Das zweite Buch der Koumlnige 88ndash89 See Ernst Wuumlrthwein Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige vol 2 1 Koumln 172ndash2 Koumln 25 (Goumlttingen Vanden-hoeck amp Ruprecht 1984) 384ndash85 Becking The Fall of Samaria 18 Fritz Das zweite Buch derKoumlnige 88


noted that the הלילגה is a more or less late form⁸⁸ Considering the difference be-tween the two object markers and the different phrase ילתפנץראלכ it has beenargued that הלילגה־תאודעלגה־תאו is a later addition Both Gilead and Galilee arequite late additions which are intended to establish a larger territory of the Northas conquered area Perhaps it was influenced by Jdt 155 or the Maccabean revoltin 1Macc 517 20 55 If this is accepted then ילתפנץראלכ becomes the concludingsummary of the cities in the north which then only comprises the Huleh valley⁸⁹The important town of Dan which was definitely destroyed by the Assyrians butlater rebuilt as an administrative center is (deliberately) absent (but cf 1Kgs1520) Despite this detailed discussion most of the cities just mentioned showsigns of significant destruction from Assyrian invaders in the archaeological re-cord Southern cities were also subject to the same destructive forces⁹⁰ Tel Dan(Stratum II) was destroyed violently by Tiglath-pileser III Domestic and publiczones were affected alike Bethsaida (et-Tell Stratum Va) was destroyed by firein intense warfare Chinnereth (Tell el-ʻOreimeh Stratum II) was almost com-pletely destroyed Although clear signs of destruction are undeniable Yifat Thar-eani has recently argued against the view that the Assyrians totally emptied theland ldquoIt seems that the archaeological evidence from Dan rules out the domi-nant theory that by the late eighth century BCE the Assyrians left the regionas an lsquoempty cellrsquordquo⁹sup1 After the Assyrian conquest Dan prospered and this factalso argues against a total decline in the Huleh region Thareani calls this a ldquomid-dle-rangerdquo strategy which aimed at the economic exploitation of the region Wewill not discuss the outcome of the campaign and the repercussions of the As-syrian strategy in the present paperWith Tiglath-pileser IIIrsquos raid Israel enteredthe final stage of vassalage that was accompanied by a significant loss of terri-tory and the deportation of people

The Galil is attested also in Josh 207 2132 1Kgs 634 911 1Chr 661 Esth 16 Cant 514 andIsa 823 Only 2Kgs 1529 reads הלילג See Narsquoaman ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo274 see James A Montgomery A Critical andExegetical Commentary on the Books of Kings (New York Scribner 1951) 452Wuumlrthwein Buumlcherder Koumlnige 383 Cogan and Tadmor II Kings 174 See Yifat Thareani ldquoImperializing the Province A Residence of a Neo-Assyrian City Gover-nor at Tel Danrdquo Levant 48 (2016) 257ndash58 ead ldquoThe Archaeological Character of an ImperialFrontier Assyrian Control Policy in the Hula Valleyrdquo in Archaeology and History of EmpiresModels Projects and Works in Progress in Northern Mesopotamia ed Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault and Olivier Rouault (2013 Paris conference forthcoming) For the campaign see also Du-bovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo 164ndash66 and Dijkstra and Vriezen ldquoThe AssyrianProvince of Gileadrdquo 6ndash 10 Thareani ldquoImperial Frontierrdquo 14


38 Hoshea

Whether Hoshea the last king of Israel (who is not even mentioned by the con-querors of Samaria Shalmaneser V and Sargon II in 72221 BCE)⁹sup2 was a usurperor whether he was installed by Tiglath-pileser III differs between the portrayal in2Kgs 1530 and the Assyrian Summary Inscription 4 (2117C) line 11 (translationfollowing K Lawson Younger in CoS II288) ldquoPekah their king and I installedHoshea [as king] over themrdquo How Pekah was eliminated remains unclear butthe Assyrian sources are distinct about the fact that Hoshea was installed bythe Assyrians⁹sup3 In contrast the biblical account is clear in its classification ofHoshearsquos accession as a revolt It employs the classical formula in 2Kgs 1530abut in an intensified form that repeats the root והתימיווהכיווהילמר־ןבחקפ־לע

הלא־ןבעשוהרשק־רשקיוויתחתךלמיו ldquoAnd Hoshea son of Elah conspired a con-spiracy against Pekah son of Remaliah attacked him and killed him he reignedin place of himrdquo

Read against the sources the historicity of Hoshearsquos coup drsquoeacutetat becomesdoubtful The situation is echoed in the Aramean inscription of the Tel Danstele that claims the regicide of Joram (and Ahaziah) while 2Kgs 924ndash27names Jehu as the killer of both (see above) While one has to admit that bothreports are colored for propagandistic purposes read against the Assyrian prac-tice the installation of Hoshea by the Assyrian king makes considerable sensePerhaps it was also the Assyrian mastermind who drove the revolt against thedisobedient Pekah as Bob Becking suggested ldquoBeide Positionen sind vonihren jeweiligen Perspektiven gepraumlgt und lassen sich in das Bild zusammenfuuml-gen dass der assyrische Koumlnig eine Revolte Hoscheas unterstuumltzt habenkoumlnnterdquo⁹⁴ If this points us in the right direction then also the last revolt in Sa-maria which is pictured so vividly in many versions of the history of Israel in-tentionally misinforms to promote a particular viewpoint

For the discussion on the conquest of Samaria see the chapters of Danrsquoel Kahn and BobBecking in the present volume For the installation of Hoshea as king see Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III277ndash78 Weippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament 147ndash49 Kyle Lawson YoungerJr ldquoThe Summary Inscription 9ndash10 (2117F)rdquo and ldquoThe Summary Inscription 13 (2117G)rdquo inHallo and Younger The Context of Scripture vol 2 291ndash92 Bob Becking ldquoHoscheardquo in Das Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (wwwwibilexde)2012 (httpswwwbibelwissenschaftdestichwort21574 last access 04122017)


4 The Built-in Weakness of the Northern StateSome Conclusions

This viewpoint is a very critical attitude towards the north which does not attrib-ute to it any continuity of governance beyond the Omride and Nimshide dynas-ties This must be contrasted with the allegedly unbroken chain of Davidides inthe south However this continuity becomes suspicious when one considershow heavily biased this account is When we consider the details of Solomonrsquossuccession and the accounts of Athaliah and Joash Joram and Ahaziah it isthe continuity of the Davidic dynasty that becomes suspicious⁹⁵ Anyway the de-scribed instability of the Northern Kingdom is clearly the result of a Judean biasWithin this pattern it is striking that all usurpers of the eighth century carrynon‐Yahwistic names Is this by chance I do not think so but whether this isby chance or partly deliberate cannot be answered Menahem (Miniḫini)Pekah (Paqaḫa) and Hoshea (Auširsquo) are attested in Assyrian sources as namesof the northern monarchy and Menahem or Shallum are names often attestedextra-biblically Hence to be suspicious about the occurrance of non-Yahwisticnames is probably being overly-cautious However it fits the pattern that the ir-regularities of the Northern Kingdom stand in direct contrast to Godrsquos will as ex-pressed in the unified Davidic kingdom in the south One question has to be an-swered at the end of this argument Why is there any continuity in the northerndynasties It is striking that Omri Ahab Ahaziah and Joram and Jehu Jehoa-haz Joash Jeroboam and Zechariah were conceived as dynasties although theywere sometimes judged more harshly than other kings of Samaria I have no ex-planation other than that these prosperous dynasties which were all largelysuccessful in economic political and religious governance could not be easilydisparaged by the Deuteronomists Further historiographical studies are neces-sary to substantiate this

Let me summarize these considerations with a few remarks This paper fo-cused on the portrayal of the last kings of Israel against the background ofthe string of revolts reported in the historical accounts in the Book of KingsThe revolts of Jeroboam Baasha Zimri Tibni Omri Jehu Shallum MenahemPekah and Hoshea have been considered in detail The account of the 15 yearperiod from 747ndash732 BCE in 2Kgs 15 was demonstrated to be a mix of historicaland legendary construction Only meager glimpses of lsquohistoricalrsquo details are

For the discontinuity of the Davidic dynasty see Frevel Geschichte Israels 192 205ndash8216ndash21


given in the biblical account The single reports are linked very much with eachother in terms of keywords phrases geography and particular details Theyform a continuous narrative of depravity instability and even immorality Thisportrayal is not interested in historical correctness but instead distorts the polit-ical history of Samaria deliberately Particularly the detailed information on theAssyrian campaigns from the 12th to the 14th palucirc of Tiglath-pileser III (ie theyears 743ndash743 BCE) is missing Only the list of cities in the Huleh valley of thenorthern territory gives us a clue about the loss of Israelite sovereignty althoughthe portrayal does not reflect the creation of the province of Magidducirc (in 732BCE) The campaign to the Huleh basin is not related to the subjugation of Gileadand Galilee This detail was added to the text by a later gloss for the purpose ofhistorical accuracy It has become clear that the portrayal of the Northern King-dom in 2Kgs 15 does not aim at a historically exact narration of the events It isbiased and interested in the instability of the Northern Kingdom in contrast withDavidic continuity Whether Hoshea Pekah and even Menahem were indeedusurpers by revolution or whether they were installed by the Assyrian powerremains thus open for discussion But we have presented grounds to assumean Assyrian mastermind behind the revolts of Menahem and Hoshea ratherthan individual usurpers who acted on their own account

This bias was particularly apparent in the fact that the text does not differ-entiate explicitly between pro- and contra-Assyrian foreign policy In fact thereare indications that Hoshea and Menahem pleaded (and if under constraint hellip)for a more pro-Assyrian position while Pekah established an anti-Assyrian pol-icy But almost nothing from the struggle in Israel between different positionscan be drawn directly from the text Most inviting to speculation was the oftenenigmatic information given about Menahem outside that in 2Kgs 15 the murderof Shallum the role of Tirzah the regional importance of Gilead and the crueltyto Tiphsah etc We suggested that Menahem erected a rival kingdom in Tirzahand that he gained power in Samaria with the help of Tiglath-pileser III payinga heavy tribute to gain power against the anti-Assyrian Shallum

With regard to the earlier revolts we argued that in particular the accountof Jeroboam I the putsch of Baasha and the struggle of Zimri and Tibni weremore or less inventions The ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquowas characterized as a very effec-tive ldquoinvention of traditionrdquo to blame the Northern Kingdom from its beginningMethodologically speaking the present paper took a very sceptical position onhistoricity for heuristic purposes In discussing the textual evidencewe were un-able to uncover sufficient reliable historical details in the biblical text This paperhas argued on the presumption that the history of the Northern Kingdom wascompiled from administrative lists which existed for the Omride and Nimshidekingdoms However almost all historiography before the Omrides is a retelling of


later stories details and characterizations This became particularly evident inthe discussion of 1Kgs 15 and the presentation of the confrontation betweenJudah and Israel The presentation of the Northern Kingdom is much more a fic-tive narrative than a factual history


Michael Pietsch

Hoshea ben Elah the Last King of IsraelNarrative and History in 2 Kings 171ndash6

1 Introduction

In the controversial discussion about the circumstances that led to the downfallof Samaria there is still an important significance ascribed to the compact ac-count of the events in 2Kgs 171ndash6sup1 The reason for this is not so much thatthe biblical narrative is considered to be of particularly historical value as asource but rather the fact that the cuneiform sources provide contradictory re-ports as to which Assyrian ruler conquered Samaria While the BabylonianChronicle attributes the conquest to Shalmaneser Vsup2 his successor Sargon IIclaims for himself in contemporary inscriptions to have destroyed the city de-ported its inhabitants and incorporated the remaining Samarian state into theAssyrian provincial systemsup3 This finding has been interpreted as either evidencefor two separate military seizures of Samaria⁴ or as an indication for a joint ven-ture of both Assyrian kings⁵ In order to support their interpretation both models

The actual debate is briefly summarized in Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels (StuttgartKohlhammer 2016) 234ndash45 The most thorough treatment of the problem is still offered byBob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill 1992)cf also Nadav Naʾaman ldquoThe Historical Background to the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)rdquoBib 71 (1990) 206ndash25 and Stefan Timm ldquoDie Eroberung Samarias aus assyrisch-babylonischerSichtrdquo in id ldquoGott kommt von Teman helliprdquo Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte Israels und Syrien-Palauml-stinas ed Claudia Bender and Michael Pietsch (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 2004) 103ndash20 The text of the Babylonian Chronicle dates from the 22nd year of the reign of the Persian kingDarius II (ie 500 BC) but can be traced back to even older traditions The Chronicle mentionsthat in the reign of Shalmaneser V he ldquobrokerdquo (ḫepucirc) the city of Samaria Albert Kirk GraysonAssyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locus Valley NY Augustin 1975) 73 Cf the prism inscription of Sargon II from KalḫuNimrud column IV lines 25ndash41 (cf ManfredWeippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testament [Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht2010] 301ndash302) and the somewhat contemporary annals of the king from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsā-bād lines 10ndash 17 which text is however greatly damaged and often complemented by the par-allel report from the Prism Inscription (cf the critical discussion in Becking Fall 39ndash44) Cf Hayim Tadmor ldquoThe Campaigns of Sargon IIrdquo JCS 12 (1958) 22ndash40 77ndash100 whose sug-gestion many have followed cf the literature listed in Becking Fall 38 note 78 Cf Herbert Donner Israel unter den Voumllkern Die Stellung der klassischen Propheten des 8 Jahr-hunderts vChr zur Auszligenpolitik der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda (Leiden Brill 1964) 65ndash66 Othersupporters of this interpretation are mentioned in Becking Fall 33 note 56

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-016

invoke particular passages from the biblical account in 2Kgs 171ndash6 that corre-spond to the respective cuneiform writings But in doing so the literary structureand narrative pragmatic of each text are not seriously taken into considerationSuch an analysis should however precede any historical interpretation There-fore this chapter will first discuss the narrative composition of the res gestaeof the last king of Israel Hoshea ben Elah in 2Kgs 171ndash6 In the second partbased on the literary analysis of the episode what one can derive for a historicalreconstruction of ldquothe last days of the kings of Israelrdquo will be considered

2 2Kgs 171ndash6 as Narrative

The passage restarts the narrative plot in the Book of Kings by the syntacticalconstruction x-qāṭal and the temporal modification ldquoin the 12th year of Ahazthe king of Judahrdquo reaching back chronologically beyond the report of thedeath and burial of Ahaz in 2Kgs 1619ndash20 The declaration of the nine-yearreign of the last king of Israel in Samaria (cf v 1b) is taken up again bymeans of the stipulation ldquoin the 9th year of Hosheardquo (v 6) which closes the liter-ary sequence⁶ The syntactical structure of the section reveals a three-part com-position which is marked by the use of the element x-qāṭal the actual narrativefollowing the introductory regnal formula in vv 1ndash2 starts with v 3a as indicatedby the syntactical construction x-qāṭal along with the introduction of the king ofAssyria Shalmaneser V This is continued with a chain of narrative forms untilv 5 and ends with a note about the three-year siege of the city of Samaria bythe Assyrians⁷ The use of a temporal adverb at the beginning of v 6a (cf x-qāṭal) marks yet another break and emphasizes the comment about the captureof the city and the deportation of its inhabitants as the final point of the se-quence in contrast to what precedes it This provides a clear structure of thetext (Fig 1) which goes from vv 1ndash2 across vv 3ndash5 ending in v 6

This observation dissuades the widespread assumption that vv 3ndash4 andvv 5ndash6 contain parallel accounts of the same event which were taken from dif-ferent archival collections⁸ This assumption is also contradicted by the fact that

However the title ldquothe king of Assyriardquooccurs again in vv 24ndash33 linking this passage back tothe narrative in vv 3ndash6 and supposing the identity of the Assyrian king mentioned in both texts The chain of events is interrupted by a relative clause in v 4a giving some background infor-mation on the revolt of Hoshea namely the request for help from the Egyptian pharao and theholding back of the regular tribute to the Assyrian overlord This assumption goes back as far as Hugo Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen (Leip-zig Eduard Pfeiffer 1892) 15ndash25 who supposed that the twofold mention of a military cam-

336 Michael Pietsch

in a synchronic reading the notice on the vassal status of Hoshea in v 3 estab-lishes the factual prerequisite for the Assyrian campaign described in vv 4ndash6and that without vv 3ndash4 some of the syntactical references in vv 5ndash6 were mis-leading⁹ Finally the question remains which type of archival material should

Fig 1 The syntactic structure of 2Kgs 171ndash6 Prepared by the author

paign by Shalmaneser V against Samaria in v 3a and v 5a is due to the literary-critical techniqueof Wiederaufnahme indicating the use of two independent literary sources by the narrator Thefirst of which (represented in vv 3bndash4) was originally connected to the historical account in2Kgs 1529 whereas the second (vv 3a45ndash6) was related to 2Kgs 1530 However the startingpoint for Wincklerrsquos thesis was the observation that the biblical account neither fits with the re-port on the vassal status of Hoshea in the royal inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III nor with theclaim of Sargon II to have conquered the city of Samaria and deported its inhabitants Regardingthe narrative plot of the biblical account in 2Kgs 173ndash6 it is evident that the mentioning of theAssyrian king in v 3a and in v 5a is related to two different events as can easily be learned fromtheir respective context Therefore it is not necessary to regard them as a literary doublet or acase of redactional Wiederaufnahme The narrative sequence from v 4b to vv 5ndash6 may seema little awkward to modern interpreters but it is not to be explained by means of source criti-cism Cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo 103ndash 104 with note 3 ndash Christoph Levin has clearly recognized thedifficulties of a source-critical explanation of the literary structure of the passage and has ar-gued in favor of a redaction-critical analysis based on a comparison with the parallel accountin 2Kgs 189ndash 11 (cf his chapter in the present volume) He presupposes that 2Kgs 189ndash 12 belongto a later editing in the account of the reign of Hezekiah king of Judah Its presentation of the


be considered as a source for the accounts The Samarian royal court can hardlybe consideredsup1⁰

21 The Introductory Regnal Formula (vv 1ndash2)

If we return to the beginning of the passage it has already been said that thesynchronistic dating of the beginning of Hoshearsquos regency in the 12th year ofthe Judean king Ahaz reaches back narratively to a point before the final versesof the previous chapter In 2Kgs 1529ndash30 the narrator has informed the readermore precisely that Hoshea came to power through a military coup (qaeligšaeligr)against the ruling king Pekah after Tiglath-pileser III had annexed the (Upper)Galilee and the region of Gileadsup1sup1 Hence in the narrative plot of the Book of

events has been taken over from the report in 2Kgs 173ndash6 with only a little editorial reworkingand the insertion of v 12 Therefore only those textual elements from 2Kgs 173ndash6 which are alsopresent in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 can be assumed to be the original report of the events This is to be con-firmed by demonstrating that all the secondary elements in the narrative of 2Kgs 173ndash6 (cfvv 3bndash5a) share a common polemical bias discrediting the last king of Israel (cf the textualvariant in the Antiochene reading of v 2b) Regarding the secondary origin of 2Kgs 189ndash12Levin seems to be right The passage interprets Samariarsquos demise as due to the peoplesrsquo (andtheir kingsrsquo respectively) breaking of the covenant with Yhwh by not obeying the Mosaictorah By this means it contrasts Hezekiahrsquos rebellion against Sennacherib ldquothe King of Assyriardquo(cf 2Kgs 187b) with the revolt of Hoshea for Hezekiah did follow the torah of Yhwh (cf v 6) Itwas his intention to explain why the rebellion of Hoshea led to the total loss of political sover-eignty and the deportation of ldquoall Israelrdquowhile Hezekiah even after his revolt failed had only topay some heavy tribute to the Assyrians but remained king in Jerusalem (cf 2Kgs 1813ndash 16) Theeditor was neither interested in the reign of Hoshea itself nor in his personal fate He used onlythe information from 2Kgs 173ndash6 which supports his own argument (eg the events mentionedin v 3 would have weakened the antagonism between Hoshea and Hezekiah) If this proves to becorrect it is not possible to reconstruct any older textual layer in 2Kgs 173ndash6 by means of a com-parison with the account in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 The narrative plot in 2Kgs 173ndash6 however shows noclear indication of a redactional reworking (cf also the chapter by Danʾel Kahn in the presentvolume) 2Kgs 173ndash4 has often been assigned to a Northern tradition originating from the royal an-nals of the court in Samaria but this assumption is not very probable (cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo104 note 3) The events belong to the so-called Syro-Ephraimite War (cf 2Kgs 165ndash9) dating to the years73332ndash73231 BC according to the Eponym Chronicle for the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (cfWeip-pert Textbuch 285ndash87) The narrator claims these territories for Israel but at least Gilead seemsto have been under Aramaean control at this time (cf the chapter by Norma Franklin in the pres-ent volume) ndash Hoshearsquos rebellion is termed in the view of the reigning king Pekah as a militarycoup (qaeligšaeligr cf 2Kgs 174a) without any religious disqualification

338 Michael Pietsch

Kings the note in v 1 reminds the reader of Hoshearsquos violent seizing of powerThe dating of this event in 2Kgs 1530b however is in the 20th year of thereign of Jotham the father of Ahaz who reigned only 16 years according to2Kgs 1533 However according to 2Kgs 161 Ahaz was crowned king in Jerusalemin the 17th year of Pekah king of Israel Since Pekah ruled 20 years according to2Kgs 1527 Hoshea would have ascended the throne in the fourth year of Ahazsup1sup2

The various chronological and text-critical problems apparent in the diver-gent statements do not need to be discussed here in detailsup1sup3 Only a brief com-ment on the synchronism in 2Kgs 171 shall be given The calculation thatleads to the 12th year of Ahaz finds its point of origin it seems neither withthe date of the beginning of the reign of Ahaz nor with the chronology of thereign of Pekah Instead it is to be found in the synchronism between Hezekiahking of Judah and Hoshea in 2Kgs 181 If this is right it has to be assumed thatthe beginning of Hoshearsquos reign has been postdated and that his third regnalyear overlapped with the 15th and 16th year of Ahazsup1⁴ The synchronistic datingof the capture of Samaria in 2Kgs 189ndash 11 on the other hand presupposes thesynchronism in 181sup1⁵ However it is quite obvious that the system of synchron-

The textual and historical difficulties regarding the synchronistic datings in the Book ofKings are discussed in further detail in the chapters by Christian Frevel and Kristin Weingartin the present volume In the transmission of the Greek text different attempts have been made to harmonize thechronological problems present in the Masoretic text However no coherent chronological sys-tem has been reached in the history of textual transmission Therefore it seems difficult to drawany firm conclusions from the textual variants with regard to different chronological systemswithin the sources used by the editor of the Book of Kings as did Joachim Begrich Die Chrono-logie der Koumlnige von Israel und Juda und die Quellen des Rahmens der Koumlnigsbuumlcher (TuumlbingenMohr Siebeck 1929) 102ndash 15 This proposal would imply that the beginning of the calendrial year has been already trans-ferred to spring-time in Samaria while in Judah it still remained autumn ndash or at least the oneresponsible for the synchronism understood it in this way Otherwise a short period of co-regen-cy between both Judean kings not attested elsewhere has to be assumed cf the discussion inErasmus Gaszlig Im Strudel der assyrischen Krise (2 Koumlnige 18ndash 19) Ein Beispiel biblischer Ge-schichtsdeutung (Neukirchen-Vluyn Neukirchener 2016) 7 Or is the synchronism in 2Kgs 181 made up by the editor responsible for the insertion ofvv 9ndash 12 into the narrative contrasting the reigns of Hezekiah and Hoshea In the narrativeflow of the Book of Kings the reference to the nameless ldquoKing of Assyriardquo against whom Heze-kiah rebelled (cf 2Kgs 187b) points back to Shalmaneser V who led Israel into exile (cf 2Kgs173ndash6 24ndash28) This could explain the chronological contradiction between the regnal datesin v 1 and the account of Sennacheribrsquos campaign against Judah dated in the 14th year of Heze-kiah according to 2Kgs 1813ndash16


istic dating in the Book of Kings is primarily a product of historiographic reason-ing and cannot simply be taken as face value for historical queries

Following the regnal dates of the king a historiographic evaluation ofHoshearsquos rule is given (v 2) ldquoHe has committed evil in the eyes of Yhwhrdquo(v 2a) This is in accord with the same negative judgment all the kings of Israelreceive (with the single exception of Jehu cf 2Kgs 1030) albeit with one note-worthy qualification ldquobut not like the kings of Israel that came before himrdquo(v 2b) The reproach taken up against the last king of Israel differs from theusual theological pattern without offering a clearer reason in the text itselfsup1⁶In this respect the formulation differs from its closest parallel in 2Kgs 32ndash3There the negative judgment against Jehoram king of Israel the son of Ahabis qualified because he supposedly acted against the cult of Baʿal which his pa-rents promotedsup1⁷ He allowed however the ldquoSin of Jeroboamrdquo the establishmentof two golden calves as idols to be worshiped in Dan and Bethel (cf 2Kgs1228ndash32) to continue which led to a negative overall judgment of his reignA similar argument was the basis of Jehursquos evaluation in 2Kgs 1028ndash31 Yhwhacknowledges that Jehu did ldquowhat is right in my eyesrdquo in that he extinguishedthe cult of Baʿal and executed judgment against the Omride dynasty But because

In the Antiochene text of the Septuagint there is no restriction to the negative evaluation ofthe king On the contrary it is explicitly said that he has done evil in the eyes of Yhwhmore thanany other king of Israel before him (παρὰ πάντας τοὺς γενομένους ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ [= mikkolʾašœr hāyucirc lepānacircw cf 1Kgs 149 1625 30 33]) The downfall of Samaria it is reasoned wasdue to the outstanding evil committed by its last king This textual variant seems to correctthe difficult Masoretic reading by referring to a more common phraseology to which textual pri-ority cannot be ascribed However it has been argued that the phrase occurs in the Masoretictext one last time with regard to Ahab who is stigmatized as the sinful king par excellence(cf 1Kgs 1630 33) In the Antiochene text on the other hand it is also present in 1Kgs 2254(with regard to Ahaziah Ahabrsquos son und successor to the throne) and 2Kgs 172 indicating ause of the phrase not yet biased by the dogmatic stigmatization of king Ahab cf Julio C Tre-bolle ldquoLa caiacuteda de Samariaacute critica textual literaria e histoacuteria de 2Re 173ndash6rdquo Salmanticensis28 (1981) 137ndash52 and the chapter by Timo Tekoniemi in the present volume However with re-gard to 1Kgs 2254 the reading present in the rest of the Greek manuscripts (κατὰ πάντα τὰ γε-νόμενα ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ) might have been reworked in the Antiochene textform to fit the morecommon expression Therefore it does not seem reasonable to assume a dogmatic correction inthe Masoretic text of 1Kgs 2254 nor is the enigmatic reading in 2Kgs 172 due to a similar interest In 2Kgs 32b it is mentioned that Jehoram turned aside the pillar of Baʿal which his fatherhad erected This account contradicts 2Kgs 1026ndash27 ascribing the destruction of the pillar ofBaʿal in Samaria to Jehu However there is no other mention of Ahab erecting a pillar forBaʿal in the Book of Kings The account may want to explain why there is almost no polemicagainst the cult of Baʿal within the Elisha narratives (with exception of 2Kgs 313ndash 14 922 ndashboth referring to the religious acts of Ahab and his wife Jezebel) and why the prophet himselfis partly acting on behalf of the Omride king (cf 2Kgs 6ndash7)

340 Michael Pietsch

he held fast to the ldquoSin of Jeroboamrdquo the length of his dynasty is limited to fourgenerations (vv 29ndash30) This finding could point to the fact that the qualifica-tion of the negative judgment of the king in 2Kgs 172 purports that the worshipof Yhwh in the form of the two golden calves at Dan and at Bethel were no longercontinued in the time of Hosheasup1⁸ This is at least evident in the narrative plot ofthe Book of Kings for the Upper-Galilean city of Dan which is located in the areathat had been annexed by Tiglath-pileser III according to 2Kgs 1529Whether ornot one can reckon with a loss of cultic image in Bethel due to the heavy tributepaid to the Assyrians is less certain regarding the many textual problems in Hos105ndash6

22 The Downfall of Samaria (vv 3ndash6)

221 The Prologue (v 3)

The course of events begins in v 3 introduced by the syntactical construction x-qāṭal By means of the precedence of the prepositional construction lsquoālacircw Hosh-earsquos fate is emphasized and the focus on the king himself is continued beyondthe introductory remarks ldquoAgainst him Shalmaneser the king of Assyria cameuprdquo (v 3a) Mentioning Shalmaneser V by name marks on the one hand a chro-nological transition over and against the previous section in 2Kgs 1517ndash1620where an Assyrian king in the person of Tiglath-pileser III enters the narrativestage of events for the first time in the Book of Kingssup1⁹ On the other hand it es-

Cf Alexander Rofeacute The Prophetical Stories The Narratives about the Prophets in the HebrewBible their Literary Types and History (Jerusalem Magness Press 1988) 98 with note 50 ldquoAc-cording to the Rabbis Hoshea son of Elah removed the praesidia (garrison troops) who had pre-vented the Israelites from making pilgrimages to Jerusalem (bGit 88a bTaʿan 28a bBBat 121b)rdquo Tiglath-pileser III is introduced in 2Kgs 1519ndash20 with the Assyrian name Pūl(u) by which hewas known in Persian and Hellenistic times The episode belongs to the reign of Menahem kingof Israel who is mentioned among the tributaries of Tiglath-pileser III in a list dating to the year738 BC (cfWeippert Textbuch 288ndash90) The name Tiglath-pileser (III) first occurs in the biblicalnarrative in 2Kgs 1529 during the reign of Pekah king of Israel He annexed Northern Galileeand the Transjordanian territories from Israel and led the people into exile The second mention-ing of the Assyrian king by name is related to the same event the anti-Assyrian coalition defeat-ed by the king in the years 73332ndash73231 BC (cf 2Kgs 167ndash9) Hence the narrative compositionin 2Kgs 15ndash16 can be read as if Pul and Tiglath-pileser (III) were two different Assyrian kings (asis supposed in 1Chr 526) who are opposed to different Israelite (and Judean) kings In this casethe reign of Tiglath-pileser III would have been narrowed down to the events related to the so-called Syro-Ephraimite War Hoshea the last king of Israel is then linked to a new Assyrianking Shalmaneser V


tablishes to whom the title ldquothe King of Assyriardquo refers as a function of literarycoherence throughout the story (cf vv 4 5 and 6) The narrator does not give areason for the sudden appearance of the Assyrian king there is also no exacttemporal reference of the event within the reign of Hoshea The idea of a vassalrelationship between Hoshea and Tiglath-pileser III the predecessor of Shalma-neser V on the Assyrian throne is often referred to in order to understand thestatement in v 3asup2⁰ The Book of Kings however is not predisposed to reportanything regarding such a relationship Indeed the mention of the Galileanand Transjordan territories of Israel annexed by Tiglath-pileser III in 2Kgs1529 could be interpreted as punishment for Pekah participating in an anti-As-syrian coalition in the view of 2Kgs 167ndash9 but it is only in 2Kgs 173b that Hosh-earsquos status as an Assyrian vassal is reported for the first time

This corresponds with the observation that v 3 is not mentioning any at-tempt by Hoshea to throw off the Assyrian yoke as is the case in v 4a In addi-tion the sudden appearance of Shalmaneser V and the resulting obligation ofthe king of Israel to pay tribute has a close parallel in connection with thefirst mention of an Assyrian ruler in the Book of Kings in the time of Menahemof Israel in 2Kgs 1519ndash20 He just like Hoshea was able to affect an Assyrianwithdrawal through the payment of a hefty tribute The expansionistic politicsof the Assyrian kings apparently did not need any further rationale In the nar-rative framework of 2Kgs 173ndash6 the comment on Hoshearsquos vassal status sets thestage for the events evolving It has an expository function for what follows

222 Israelrsquos Way into Exile (vv 4ndash6)

The introductory function of v 3 is also highlighted by the temporal phrasekešānāh bešānāh (ldquofrom year to year annuallyrdquo) in v 4a separating the followingevents from what has preceded A closer dating however is just as unclear as inthe exposition In other words when exactly did Hoshea stop paying the annualtribute and began conspirative negotiations with Egypt is unknown to the narra-tor or at least considered meaningless for his narrative presentation The onlyfact important is the situation at hand that the last king of Israel ndash for unknown

Either the vassal status of Hoshea mentioned in v 3b is paralleled to the notion of him pay-ing tribute to Tiglath-pileser III in the royal inscriptions of the Assyrian king (cfWeippert Text-buch 296) or ndash more commonly ndash it is assumed that the Israelite king participated in an anti-Assyrian revolt of some Syro-Palestinian vassal states subdued by Shalmaneser V shortly afterhis accession to the throne cf Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor II Kings A New Translationwith Introduction and Commentary (New York Doubleday 1988) 198ndash99

342 Michael Pietsch

reasons ndash decided to revoke his loyalty to the king of Assyria thereby setting thedisastrous events in motion which led to the decline of Samaria and the exile ofIsrael

Whether there is something more to the difficult form of the name of theEgyptian king socircʾ in v 4a perhaps a shortened form of the name Osorkon(IV) or a misunderstood pharaonic titlesup2sup1 plays secondary role for the under-standing of the narrative For the South Palestinian petty states Egypt is theclosest ally without whose military support an uprising against the supremacyof Assyria would be pointlesssup2sup2

Although Hoshearsquos violation of loyalty precedes chronologically the secondemergence of the Assyrian king the narrator only mentions it in a circumstantialclause (textual background cf Fig 1) The progress of the plot line (textual for-ground) is dominated by the king of Assyria who uncovered Hoshearsquos rebel-lionsup2sup3 He is the main character (Fig 2) in the narrative (cf vv 3a 4a1b 5ndash6)

The exposure of the conspiracy resulted in Hoshearsquos arrest the details ofwhich remain vague Neither battle nor siege are mentioned in v 4b Instead

Cf the discussion of the various suggestions in Bernd U Schipper ldquoWer war lsquoSōʾ Koumlnig vonAumlgyptenrsquordquo BN 92 (1998) 71ndash84 Even Yamani of Ashdod sought Egyptian support for his anti-Assyrian activities (cf Morkotin this volume p 131) Therefore the narrated world of the text can demand a certain degree ofhistorical plausibility but it is based on a more general pattern in Syro-Palestinian political af-fairs whose only individual detail the name of the pharao remains obscure Cf the chapter ofRobert Morkot in this volume If Hoshearsquos rebellion is called a coup drsquoetat (qaeligšaeligr) the negative qualification of the term isreasonable from the perspective of the Assyrian overlord However a religious disqualificationof the last king of Israel is not necessarily implied (see above note 11)

Fig 2 Acting characters in 2Kgs 173ndash6 Prepared by the author


the personal consequences of the king are pointed out He is captured by the As-syrians (ʿṣr) and thrown into prison (ʾsr + becirct kaeliglaeligʾ)sup2⁴ The root ʾsr (ldquoto bind totierdquo) appears again later with the Judean kings Jehoahaz and Zedekiah both ofwhom are led into captivity to Egypt and Babylon respectively (cf 2Kgs 2333257) If this was the case for Hoshea as well then his fate would symbolicallypoint to that of Israel (cf v 6) but this is not explicitly said The narrator is rathersilent concerning the future wellbeing of the last king of Israel ndash he is capturedand arrested but still alive In contrast to Necho II and Nebuchadnezzar II(cf 2Kgs 2334 2417) Shalmaneser V did not install a new king in SamariaThis implies that Hoshea is the last king of Israel known by the narrator itdoes not imply however that his reign necessarily ended with his capturesup2⁵

With the comment concerning the capture of Hoshea the narrative comesto a relative end as nothing else is said about the fate of the king also the an-tagonism between Hoshea and the Assyrian king which has dominated the nar-rative plot so far comes to an end (cf Fig 2) But the question remains what theconsequences might be for the people of Israel Hence the silence concerning asuccessor to the Samarian throne points forward to the portrayal of the siege andcapture of the city in vv 5ndash6sup2⁶ The consecutive tempora in v 5 drive the plotforward After Hoshearsquos capture the king of Assyria still identifiable as Shalma-neser V according to the rhetorical outline of the text claimed the remainingstate of Samaria (v 5a) and then moved against the capital city itself whichhe besieged for three years (v 5b) The verb ʿālāh (Fig 3) which functions asa keyword in vv 3ndash5 (cf vv 3a 4a and 5ab) evokes the threatening presenceof the Assyrian king which resulted in Hoshearsquos surrender earlier (cf v 3a) with-

Due to the course of events and according to the spatial references in the narrative plot thecapture of Hoshea must have taken place outside the Samarian territory (cf v 5a) This has led tothe assumption that the king had been summoned to Shalmaneser V and afterwards arrested (cfJehoahaz in 2Kgs 2333) The meaning of the root ʿṣr in the G-stem ldquoto hold backrdquo does not ex-clude this interpretation The sequence of actions described by ʿṣr and ʾsr (+ becirct kaeliglaeligʾ cf Judg1621 25) is in accordance with the narrative plot first Shalmaneser V arrested Hoshea before hesent him to jail This can be seen eg in the short account on Jehoiachinrsquos release in 2Kgs 2527ndash30 datingthe event according to the regnal years of the imprisoned king (cf v 27) A similar chronologicalsystem is used in the Book of Ezekiel cf Ernst Kutsch Die chronologischen Daten des Ezechiel-buches (Freiburg Universitaumltsverlag Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1985) Hence the literary analysis of the narrative plot in 2Kgs 173ndash6 confirms our earlier assump-tion that vv 3ndash4 are neither taken from an independent textual source nor have they beenadded to the passage by a later editor (see above notes 8ndash9)

344 Michael Pietsch

out conflating both events into onesup2⁷ At the same time it points toward Hoshearsquosrefusal to pay tribute in v 4a because he withheld his annual payment to theAssyrian king the Great King marched to Samaria which is named as the explic-it target of the Assyrian advance here for the first timesup2⁸

The consecutive chain of events in the middle section which establishes acoherent structure through the repetition of the root ʿlh arrives at its conclusionwith the comment about the three-year siege of Samaria in v 5b without reachingthe end of the story The actual beginning of the siege is not shared by the nar-rator it is only possible to extrapolate it retrospectively by means of the temporaladverbial phrase ldquoin the 9th year of Hosheardquo at the beginning of v 6 as it wasdone by a later editor in 2Kgs 189ndash 12 synchronizing 2Kgs 175ndash6 with thereign of the Judean king Hezekiah The much-discussed issue of whether it isplausible that Samaria was able to resist the siege of the Assyrian troops forthree years does not seem to concern the narrator He reckons that Hosheaeven while imprisoned remains the legitimate king of Israel until its political

The mention of the Assyrian king campaigning against Samaria in v 5a is not a literary dou-blet to the events mentioned in v 3a because in the first instance Shalmaneser V subduedHoshea and made him a vassal paying an annual tribute while in the second Samaria hasbeen besieged and finally captured and the people sent to exile There is also no reason to as-sume a later origin for the expression bekaringl hāʾāraeligṣ in v 5a due to its absence in the parallelversion of 2Kgs 189 as proposed by Immanuel Benzinger Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Freiburg imBreisgau Mohr Siebeck 1899) 173 The editor of 2Kgs 189ndash 12 seems instead to have compiledboth phrases from 2Kgs 173a and 5a into one Due to his historiographic interest contrastingHoshea with Hezekiah he had to eliminate the first episode of his source text which mentionsthe last king of Israel paying tribute to the Assyrian overlord in order to rescue Samaria frombecoming an Assyrian province as did Hezekiah in 2Kgs 1813ndash 16 (see above note 9) The root ʿālāh occurs twice in v 5 and in vv 3ndash4 Is this a mere coincidence However thedistribution of the root throughout the narrative shows a distinctive literary pattern (andashbndashbprimendashaprime)according to which the conquest of the land (v 5a) corresponds to the withholding of the annualtribute by Hoshea (v 4a cf also the play on words with the roots šwb and yšb in vv 3b and 6b)

Fig 3 The verb ʿālāh as keyword in 2Kgs 173ndash5 Prepared by the author


sovereignty ended The point at which this happened has already been men-tioned in the regnal summary in v 1b

The reference to the 9th year of Hoshea at the beginning of v 6 signals on theone hand the end of the siege of Samaria and marks on the other a narrativebreak It thus reveals the capture of the city and the deportation of its inhabi-tants as the pragmatic climax of the episode and connects the narrative arcback to the dates of Hoshearsquos reign in the introductory formula The capture ofthe city expressed with the verb lākad (ldquoto catch to capturerdquo) does not neces-sarily imply its destruction but instead draws a parallel to the fate of its kingsup2⁹The conquest of Samaria and the exile of its people are attributed to the sameking that is identified at the beginning of the section as Shalmaneser V (cf 2Kgs189ndash 11) He resettled the deportees in central Assyria and in the Northeasternborder areas (v 6b)sup3⁰ The expression wayyošaeligb ʾotām in v 6b phonetically ass-onates the notice of Hoshea paying tribute to the Assyrian king in v 3b (wayyā-šaeligb locirc minḫāh) Instead of paying tribute Israel itself is now brought to AssyriaThe second confrontation with the Assyrians ended badly for Israel with the loss

The root lākad with a personal object has the meaning ldquoto catchrdquo either humans (especiallyprisoners of war) or animals with cities or territories as object it means ldquoto take possession of toconquerrdquo (cf Akkadian kašādu) It always implies violence and a loss of freedom but not nec-essarily physical destruction cf Heinrich Groszlig ldquo דכל lāḵaḏrdquoThWAT 4 (1984) 573ndash76 Hence ona literary level the conquest of the city corresponds to the fate of its last king In a historicalperspective however the literary depiction of the events coincides with the archaeological re-cord in Sebaṣtye (Samaria) where no signs of a massive destruction of the city in the 8th centuryBC have been found cf Ron E Tappy The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria vol 2 The EighthCentury BCE (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2001) 558ndash75 The reference to the cities of the Medes may indicate that the deportations mentioned in v 6bdid not happen before the reign of Sargon II who in 716 BC subdued the Eastern border region ofthe Assyrian empire and incorporated it into the Assyrian provincial system (cf the chapter byKaren Radner in the present volume) However the massive deportations carried out by the As-syrian kings over a long period led to an ongoing exchange of people from all parts of the As-syrian empire Thus the deportation of the Samarians (as well as the resettlement of foreign peo-ple into the territory of Samaria cf 2Kgs 1724) is not to be imagined as a single event but hastaken place over a period of time It may well have started under the reign of Shalmaneser V andcontinued far into the time of Sargon II cf Bustenay Oded Mass Deportations and Deportees inthe Neo Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 1979) and the chapter of Karen Radner inthis volume In 2Kgs 176 the continuing process of deportations has been reorganized in a singlenarrative plot and ascribed to ldquothe King of Assyriardquo Whether the narrator had any particularknowledge about the settlement places of the deportees from Samaria (or their heirs) remainsuncertain There are references in the cuneiform sources to peoples possibly related to the de-portees from Samaria in the regions mentioned in the biblical account until the end of the 7th

century BC (cf Becking Fall 61ndash93 and the chapter by Karen Radner in the present volume)

346 Michael Pietsch

of political sovereignty and deportation of its people into a foreign country Thepeople finally share the same fate as their last king

3 Who Conquered Samaria

As mentioned at the beginning the cuneiform sources contain contrasting infor-mation concerning the events leading up to the downfall of Samaria Aside fromthe widely discussed alternatives of whether the capture of the city can be attrib-uted to Shalmaneser V or Sargon II there are further questions that arise whenthe biblical narrative in 2Kgs 173ndash6 is taken into consideration If ShalmaneserV was responsible for the conquest of Samaria at which point during his five-year reign did this take place Was the capture of the city preceded by athree-year siege Was the city handed over (by Hoshea) or was it taken byforce Was Samaria already made into an Assyrian province and the people de-ported under Shalmaneser V or did it all happen under Sargon II Did Sargon IIalready overthrow Samaria in his accession year or not before his second palucircThe list goes on and the manifold problems cannot be discussed here in detailsup3sup1The following observations will merely give a brief sketch of what contributionthe presentation of the events in 2Kgs 171ndash6 being aware of the narrative prag-matic of the passage is able to bring to bear on the discussion concerning thehistorical circumstances of the conquest of Samaria as well as which (narrow)limits are hidden in such an endeavor It is however not my primary interestto establish the historical validity of the biblical account but to point to the var-ious historical propositions upon which its interpretations generally depend

31 The Chronology

The first set of problems to address is about the chronology of events Aside fromthe contradictory information contained in the synchronistic framework of theBook of Kings which later have been reworked in the process of textual trans-missionsup3sup2 we do not have any closer knowledge about the regnal dates of the

Cf the discussion in the chapters by Eckart Frahm Norma Franklin Karen Radner and RonTappy in the present volume Eg in the divergent textforms of the Septuagint the reigning years of the earlier kings Me-nahem Pekahia and Pekah have been (with variations) enlarged to fit the given synchronisms ndasha practice still in use in modern scholarship


last king of Israel Therefore it is nearly impossible to achieve a reliable set ofdata that can bear the weight of historical scrutiny This is evident for the contra-dictory dates regarding the beginning of Hoshearsquos reign (cf 2Kgs 1530 with 171)and concerns just as much the synchronism between the downfall of Samariaand the reign of Hezekiah (cf 2Kgs 181 with 189 11) which stands in contradic-tion to the date of the third military campaign of Sennacherib which took placein the year 701 BC in the 14th year of Hezekiah (cf 2Kgs 1813)sup3sup3 However thenine-year reign of Hoshea is often seen as historically reliable informationwhich has been used to firmly establish the date of the downfall of Samariasup3⁴But when did it start To more closely determine the date of Hoshearsquos accessionto the throne it is necessary to take a closer look at the royal inscriptions of Ti-glath-pileser IIIsup3⁵

In his various summary inscriptions the Assyrian king mentions his submis-sion of Israel the installation of Hoshea as a vassal king and the collection oftributary paymentssup3⁶ Because the summary inscriptions do not follow a chrono-logical order the date of these events can only be determined by a comparisonwith the Eponym Chronicle which mentions for Tiglath-pileser III a militarycampaign against Damascus in the year 73332 and 73231 BC respectivelywhich most likely are related to the anti-Assyrian alliance also mentioned in2Kgs 165ndash9sup3⁷ It is often assumed that Samaria was already subdued duringthe first campaign of Tiglath-pileser III in the year 73332 BCsup3⁸ It is not clearhowever whether Hoshearsquos revolt according to 2Kgs 1530 occurred during

Becking Fall 53ndash54 tried to harmonize both dates by ascribing the date in 2Kgs 1813 to amilitary campaign of Sargon II to Palestine in the year 715 BC and assuming it was later errone-ously connected with Sennacheribrsquos siege of Jerusalem Assuming the nine-year reign of Hoshea is certain either the date of Hoshearsquos accession yearor the date of the fall of Samaria vary in the scholarly debate cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo115 note 49On the other hand some scholars have supposed a longer reign for the last king of Israel basedon the cuneiform sources cf Rudolf Kittel Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck ampRuprecht 1900) 273ndash74 and Albrecht Šanda Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige vol 2 Das zweite Buchder Koumlnige (Muumlnster Aschendorff 1912) 211ndash12 Cf the latest edition of the texts by Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscrip-tions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Wi-nona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) Cf Weippert Textbuch 295 and Tadmor and Yamada Inscriptions 105ndash 106 112 131ndash32 Cf Weippert Textbuch 288 Tiglath-pileser III had already campaigned in Palestine in theyear 73433 BC in order to subdue a rebellion of the Philistine coastal cities and to secure theborder to Egypt Or did Israel lose parts of its territory already during Tiglath-pileserrsquos campaign against Gazain the year 73433 BC According to the archaeological record it seems that the coastal strip wasno longer under Israelite control in the second half of the 8th century BC

348 Michael Pietsch

this conflict or followed shortly thereaftersup3⁹ Tiglath-pileser III mentions thatHoshea paid his tribute in the South-Babylonian city of Sarrabānu⁴⁰ Since theAssyrian king according to the Eponym Chronicle was engaged in a militarycampaign in this region in the year 73130 BC it would be obvious to connectthe payment of tribute with these events⁴sup1 If this tribute was Hoshearsquos first pay-ment to the Assyrian suzerain as is usually presumed it would follow that thefirst year of Hoshearsquos reign was in the year 73231 BC (or 73130 BC respectively)⁴sup2

This dating can be connected to the notice of the Babylonian Chroniclewhich attributes the conquest of Samaria to Shalmaneser V (cf 2Kgs 173ndash6)who reigned between 727 and 722 BC An even more exact dating of the eventhowever cannot be garnered from the text of the Babylonian Chronicle The as-sumption that Shalmaneser V took possession of Samaria only at the end of hisreign finds its basis on a misunderstanding of the compositional structure of theChronicle⁴sup3 Presupposing Hoshearsquos accession to the throne in Samaria in the

The wording of the Summary Inscription no 13 lines 17ndash18 indicates that Pekah was mur-dered only after Tiglath-pileser III had annexed the Galilean and Transjordan territories of Israel(cf Tadmor and Yamada Inscriptions 112) ndash perhaps to prevent any attempt to further supportthe former ally Rezin king of Damascus who withstood the Assyrian attack in 73332 BC Summary Inscription no 9 lines r 10ndash 11 (cf Weippert Textbuch 295 and Tadmor and Ya-mada Inscriptions 132) Cf Rykle Borger and Hayim Tadmor ldquoZwei Beitraumlge zur alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft auf-grund der Inschriften Tiglatpilesers IIIrdquo ZAW 94 (1982) 244ndash51 244ndash49 The BabylonianChronicle however mentions that Tiglath-pileser III did not defeat Nabucirc-mukin-zeri until theyear 72928 BC when he became king of Babylon himself (cf column I lines 19ndash23) ThereforeHoshea could have paid his tribute to the Assyrian king in Sarrabānu at this later date as wellcf Gaszlig Strudel 3ndash4 However a date of Hoshearsquos coup years after Tiglath-pileser III had reor-ganized the political landscape of Syro-Palestine seems less probable The list of Western tributaries in the Summary Inscription of Tiglath-pileser III no 7 r 7ndash13(cfWeippert Textbuch 289ndash90) probably composed in the year 72928 BC fails to mention Sa-maria and Damascus indicating that it may represent the political situation of the year 73332 BC when both rebelled against the Assyrian dominion cf Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptionsof Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Edition with Introductions Translations and Com-mentary (Jerusalem The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1994) 268 The fragmen-tary character of the inscription however does allow different interpretations Cf Becking Fall 24 ndash The Eponym Chronicle for Shalmaneser V is heavily damaged In his2nd to 4th year the king undertook military campaigns but the names of his targets are not pre-served In his first regnal year (72625 BC) he stayed in Assyria cf Alan R Millard The Eponymsof the Assyrian Empire 910ndash612 BC (Helsinki The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 1994) 59The entry for his last year is too damaged to draw further conclusions However there areother hints to military activities carried out by Shalmaneser V in Southern Syria and Babyloniarespectively but their dating remains uncertain cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo 110ndash11 What can be


year 73231 BC along with the information concerning his nine-year reign a rel-ative precise point in time for the conquest of Samaria by Shalmaneser V be-comes apparent which is compatible with the dates in the Babylonian Chroni-cle⁴⁴ If instead Sargon II has a right to his claim that he conquered Samariain his accession year (ie 72221 BC) then Hoshea could not have come intopower before the year 73029 BC or else the reign of the last king of Israelmust be calculated independent from the biblical chronology

32 The Course of Events

What is the situation concerning the information the sources provide on the se-quence of events In the Babylonian Chronicle it is only mentioned that Shalma-neser V ldquobrokerdquo Samaria (ḫepucirc) However the Akkadian verb ḫepucirc is used inother passages of the Babylonian Chronicle as an expression indicating the con-quest of cities and regions For this reason one can translate it ldquoto conquerrdquo orldquoto capturerdquo without necessarily implying a violent destruction⁴⁵ On the otherhand Sargon II presents the conquest of Samaria in a much more detailed man-ner he fought against its people and conquered (kašādu) the city deported itsinhabitants resettled deportees from other conquered areas installed a provin-cial governor and established tributes and taxes from the people All of this sup-

said for sure is that Shalmaneser V did not capture Samaria earlier than his second regnal year(72524 BC) It is likely that Hoshea (together with other Western vassal states) took advantage of the po-litical turmoil in the Assyrian homeland following Shalmaneserrsquos V accession to the thronewhich forced the king to stay at home in his first regnal year (see above note 43) Did theking first subdue the revolt in Southern Babylonia mentioned in an Aramaean letter from the7th century BC (cf KAI no 233 line 15) before he turned to the West Cf Weippert Textbuch 296ndash97 However Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo 107ndash 108 concluded from acomparison of the account concerning the capture of the cities of Ḫarratum and Ḫirimma bySennacherib in the Babylonian Chronicle (cf column II lines 24ndash25) with the parallel accountin the Annals of the king (cf column I lines 54ndash63) that ldquoḫepucirc bedeutet im uumlbertragenen Ge-brauch der babylonischen Chronik grausamste Bestrafung der Gegner Ablieferung schwerenTributs und administrative Neuordnung des eroberten Gebietesrdquo cf also Becking Fall 24ndash25But a closer analysis of the passage reveals that both cities have been treated by Sennacheribin quite different ways regarding Ḫarratum it is only said that the city had to pay heavy tributeIn the case of Ḫirimma a violent destruction of the city mutilation of the dead bodies of theenemies and an administrative reorganization of its territory is mentioned Both events havebeen summarized in the Babylonian Chronicle with the term ḫepucirc used here in a more generalsense of ldquoto break (someonersquos resistance) to subduerdquo cf Naʾaman ldquoBackgroundrdquo 211

350 Michael Pietsch

posedly occurred in the year of the kingrsquos accession to the throne according tothe Annals of Sargon II from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsābād⁴⁶

The annals are dated however from later in the reign of the king⁴⁷ The ear-lier inscriptions of Sargon II are not (yet) aware of these events and only mentionSamaria in the context of the revolt of Ilu-biʾdi of Hamath which Sargon II sur-pressed in the second year of his reign (ie 72019 BC)⁴⁸ The literary form of theportrayal in the annals follows already existing patterns and is linked to eventsthat occurred over a period of time during the reign of Sargon II⁴⁹ This couldindicate that the author(s) of the royal annals freely constructed the campaignof Sargon II against Samaria in the accession year of the king drawing onolder material and imitating the typical style of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptionsThis may have been done to conceal the fact that Sargon II was not capable ofany military undertakings due to the political turmoil in the wake of his claimingthe throne⁵⁰ Assuming this is correct it would support the assertion of the Bab-ylonian Chronicle that the conquest of Samaria occurred at the hand of Shalma-neser V

The biblical tradition mentions a three-year siege or more aptly stated ablockade of Samaria about which the Assyrian sources remain silent⁵sup1 It also

Cf the Annals of Sargon II lines 10ndash17 The fragmentary text of the annals is mostly restoredaccording to the parallel account in the Prism Inscription of Sargon II from KalḫuNimrud col-umn IV lines 25ndash41 cf Andreas Fuchs Die Inschriften Sargons II aus Khorsabad (GoumlttingenCuvullier 1994 87ndash88) The latter however does not allow a precise dating of the events Ashorter version of the story is preserved in the Summary Inscription of Sargon II from Dūr-Šar-rukēnḪorsābād lines 23ndash25 cf Weippert Textbuch 302 The annals of Sargon II from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsābād were not composed before his 15th palucirc(cf Timm ldquoEroberungrdquo 115) the Prism-Inscription from KalḫuNimrud dates from around thesame time or shortly thereafter (see above note 3) Cf the Assur Charter of Sargon II lines 16ndash28 probably written shortly after the events andthe recently discovered Tell Tayinat Stele of Sargon II cf Jacob Lauinger and Stephen Batiuk ldquoAStele of Sargon II at Tell Tayinatrdquo ZA 105 (2015) 54ndash68 and the chapter by Eckart Frahm in thepresent volume Here a remarkable parallel to the biblical narrative in 2Kgs 173ndash6 can be notedwhere a sim-ilar literary technique is to be observed cf already the remarks by John Gray I amp II Kings ACommentary (London SCM Press 1977 third edition) 60ndash62 Cf the chapter by Eckart Frahm in the present volume ndash The account in the annals that themilitary campaign against Samaria had already occurred in the accession year of Sargon II raisessome logistical problems as well because there are only a few weeks left between his accessionto the throne on the 12th of Ṭebēt (cf Babylonian Chronicle column I line 31) and the beginningof his first regnal year on the 1st of Nisān Additionally the turmoil following the death of Shal-maneser V probably made it necessary for the king to stay at home The fragmentary text of the Eponym Chronicle for Shalmaneser V does not completely ruleout a three-year siege of Samaria as mentioned in 2Kgs 175ndash6 but this would leave very little


appears unlikely that the city managed to muster the strength to resist the siegefor a considerable time even after the capture of Hoshea⁵sup2 Furthermore onemust reckon that the events as reported in 2Kgs 173ndash6 are ordered in a singlecontinuous narrative plot even though historically they most likely occurredover a much longer period of time This can be seen from the following observa-tions first the regions in which the Israelites according to 2Kgs 176b are sup-posed to have been resettled could only have been firmly incorporated in partinto the Assyrian provincial system under Sargon II⁵sup3 and second consideringthe literary structure of the chapter the resettlement of foreign deportees inthe territory of Samaria (cf 2Kgs 1724) is ascribed to the same king of Assyriawho had conquered Israel and sent the people into exile and who the cuneiformsources identify as Sargon II⁵⁴ Therefore the motif of the three-year siege of thecity of Samaria is to be understood primarily as a narrative figure to develop theplot establishing a coherent literary thread This however would be historicallycorrect in that the procedure of transforming conquered regions into an Assyrianprovince along with an expansive resettlement of the inhabitants would requiremore time than would have been possible at the hand of Shalmaneser V aloneas the inscriptions of Sargon II confirm A (short-lived) blockade of Samaria by

time for the other military campaigns the king had undertaken during his reign (see above note44) However the account from Menander mentioned by Josephus (cf Ant IX132) in whichShalmaneser V besieged Tyros for five years is not to be connected to the fall of Samaria butmost probably belongs to another time cf Ariel M Bagg Die Assyrer und das Westland Studienzur historischen Geographie und Herrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1 Jt vuZ (Leuven Peeters2011) 228ndash29 ndash In the Summary Inscription of Sargon II from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsābād the kingclaims that he laid siege (lemucirc) against Samaria and conquered (kašādu) the city (cf line 23) butthis is the only passage in the royal inscriptions of Sargon II which mentions a siege of SamariaThus a three-year blockade would be in contrast to the reports of the event in the kingrsquos annalsand in his Prism-Inscription from KalḫuNimrud dating from around the same time The contraryargument by M Christine Tetley ldquoThe Date of Samariarsquos Fall as a Reason for Rejecting the Hy-pothesis of Two Conquestsrdquo CBQ 64 (2002) 59ndash77 is not convincing Therefore J Maxwell Miller and John H Hayes A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Louis-ville KTWestminster John Knox Press 2006 second edition) 386ndash87 assumed that after Hosh-ea has been captured he was followed by another king on the throne in Samaria whose name isnot known to us anymore but there is no evidence in the sources to foster their argument cfGaszlig Strudel 14 note 52 See above note 30 Cf the reference to some Arabic tribes Sargon II has resettled in Samaria in his Cylinder-In-scription from Dūr-ŠarrukēnḪorsābād The episode is dated in the annals of the king to his 7th

palȗ (715 BC) cf Weippert Textbuch 305ndash306 Of course this does not rule out the possibilitythat other deportees had been resettled in Samaria at an earlier time starting with the reign ofShalmaneser V

352 Michael Pietsch

Shalmaneser V might have happened a three-year siege of the city however ishistorically less plausible⁵⁵ Hence the ldquoking-lessrdquo resistence of Samaria seemsto be a literary construct that does not need any historical explanation

The same is true regarding the notice that Hoshea first became an Assyrianvassal under Shalmaneser V at a time of his reign not precisely determined(cf 2Kgs 173) According to the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III Hoshea wasfrom the beginning of his reign under Assyrian domination For this reasonthe events mentioned in v 3 are often connected to a revolt of some vassal statesin Southern Syria which used the turmoil occurring in Assyria after the acces-sion of Shalmaneser V as an occasion to throw off the Assyrian yoke⁵⁶ The as-sumption that a group of Syro-Palestinian petty states took advantage of the po-litical unrest in Assyria in order to build an anti-Assyrian coalition possesses acertain amount of plausibility⁵⁷ This however serves more likely as the back-ground for the rebellion which led to the downfall of Samaria (cf 2Kgs174ndash6) The idea that Shalmaneser V mounted a second campaign against Sa-maria in such a short reign is less likely Moreover it remains unclear what rea-son there might have been for Hoshea (and his allies) to stage such a revolt laterin the reign of the Assyrian king If one takes into account that the narrator of theBook of Kings is silent about the vassal status of Hoshea under Tiglath-pileser III(cf 2Kgs 1530) and that 2Kgs 173 represents the narrative exposition for the re-port on the downfall of Samaria then it seems to be futile to search for any his-torical cause for the first advance of Shalmaneser V against Hoshea⁵⁸

Hoshearsquos insurgency against the Assyrian rule might be connected with abroader revolt of some Syro-Palestinian vassal states along with Egyptiansupport about which little more is known aside from the comment in 2Kgs

Cf Hermann Michael Niemann ldquoRoyal Samaria ndash Capital or Residence or The Foundationof the City of Samaria by Sargon IIrdquo in id History of Ancient Israel Archaeology and Bible Col-lected Essays ed Meik Gerhards (Muumlnster Ugarit-Verlag 2015) 295ndash315 305ndash307 Cf the discussion in Naʾaman ldquoBackgroundrdquo 213ndash 16 and Becking Fall 50ndash51 However this is not to be argued due to the reference from Menander in Josephus (see abovenote 51) but due to the fact that Shalmaneser V according to the Eponym Chronicle stayed athome in his first regnal year cf Jean-Jacques Glassner Mesopotamian Chronicles trans Benja-min R Foster (Atlanta GA Society of Biblical Literature 2004) 174 It can be reasoned that thestruggle with his political adversaries in Assyria (and Babylonia) encouraged the Western vassalstates to throw off the Assyrian yoke but no further information has been preserved on thecourse of events in Assyria after Shalmaneser V acceded to the throne Cf Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of SamariardquoCBQ 57(1995) 52ndash56 62ndash63


174a⁵⁹ The identity of the Egyptian pharaoh whose name (or title) is Socircʾ in thebiblical account is unresolved⁶⁰ In addition it remains questionable whetherthe narrator had any closer knowledge about the political situation in thattime or whether his narrative is mandatory to a common historical patternThe historical plausibility of an alliance with Egypt certainly cannot be deniedSuch an endeavor however would have not likely been met with much successconsidering the unstable political conditions along with competing claims topower in Egypt at that time⁶sup1

4 In Conclusion

No matter how one wants to judge the details each historical query of the eventsleading to the downfall of Samaria must take into consideration that the narra-tive in 2Kgs 173ndash6 pursues primarily an historiographic interest which subse-quently incorporates the individual narrative elements into the story Thismakes an historical analysis palpably difficult even when dispensing with thetask of verifying its historical value In this case it leads to the result that thebasic information concerning the dates in the narrative can be correlated withthe cuneiform reports The narrative does possess a general historical plausibil-ity but it does not allow a closer historical reconstruction of the course of eventswhich underlies many historicizing interpretations Neither is the biblical ac-count in 2Kgs 173ndash6 able to say what exactly happened in ldquothe last days ofthe kings of Israelrdquo nor should an historical reconstruction of the events bemade the ultimate measure of the interpretation of the text The lsquobiblicalrsquo answerto the question ldquoWho conquered Samariardquo is just as unambigious as it is ambi-gious ldquothe King of Assyriardquo

Cf Herbert Donner Geschichte Israels und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzuumlgen vol 2Von der Kouml-nigszeit bis zu Alexander dem Groszligen Mit einem Ausblick auf die Geschichte des Judentums bisBar Kochba (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1995 second edition) 345 Naʾaman ldquoBack-groundrdquo 217ndash 19 connects the account with an anti-Assyrian revolt following the accession ofSargon II to the throne subdued by the king in the year 72019 BC Thus he argues in favor ofSargon II as the Assyrian king who conquered Samaria but his proposal raises more questionsthan it can answer Cf the discussion in Naʾaman ldquoBackgroundrdquo 216ndash 17 and Schipper ldquoSōʾrdquo Cf Donner Koumlnigszeit 344ndash45

354 Michael Pietsch

Georg Hentschel

Did Hoshea of Israel Continue the ForeignPolicy of His Predecessors

1 Introduction

Why and how did the decline of the Northern Kingdom come about Did Hosheaits last king have a chance to avert the fall of his kingdom Peter Dubovskyacutewhen analysing 2Kgs 15 recently highlighted that some of the issues that mayhave contributed to the Fall of Samaria predate Hoshearsquos coming to powerMost importantly perhaps a series of coups drsquoeacutetat made the kingdom moreand more unstable ldquoWhile the first three coups drsquoeacutetat are spread over almost200 years the last four took place within 20 yearsrdquosup1 Dubovskyacute also pointed tothe rivalry between the tribes and the cities to a gradual loss of executivepower to various atrocities to the heavy burden of tribute due to the AssyrianEmpire and to ldquoIsraelrsquos wrong international policyrdquosup2

This assessment leads to our question for this chapter Did Hoshea continuethe disastrous policy of his predecessors on the throne of Israel or did he try tofind a way out Can we even hope to achieve a satisfying answer Are we in anyposition to assess the behaviour of a single person at the end of the eighth cen-tury BCE Although it seems that we know the most important events only inrough outline a great many articles and even monographs discuss the topic ofthe ldquoLast Days of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo in detail

2 Hoshearsquos Predecessors

For a long time the Northern Kingdom was strong enough to stand up againstits enemies According to the inscriptions of Shalmaneser III of Assyria Ahabof Israel took part in the battle at Qarqar (853 BCE) with 2000 chariots and10000 mensup3 when he rose against the Assyrian Empire to defend the independ-ence and sovereignty of the Levant together with other regional kingdoms But

Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fall According to 2 Kings 15rdquoBib 95 (2014)321ndash46 esp 326 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 342ndash43 Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858ndash754 BC) (TorontoToronto University Press 1996) A01022 ii 91ndash92

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-017

only a decade later in 841 BCE the Assyrian evidence shows Jehu of Israel pay-ing tribute to Shalmaneser III⁴ And he was not the only king of his dynasty whohad to recognise the great power of Assyria as Suichi Hasegawa presented in hissurvey about the biblical and Assyrian sources Jehursquos grandson Joash also paidtribute to Adad-nerari III and perhaps in 796 BCE⁵ It was certainly not easy for aruler of Israel to kneel down and to kiss the feet of the great king of Assyria Butdid he have an alternative The years after the Assyrian retreat from the Levantin 829 BCE and before the beginning of new campaigns in 805 BCE were difficultfor the Northern Kingdom because in these years Hazael and his son Ben-Hadad the kings of Aram in Damascus exercised their power over Israel Atthat time nobody would have imagined that one day Aram and Israel couldbe allies

Jehursquos dynasty ended with a conspiracy Shallum killed Zechariah the lastking of the dynasty (2Kgs 1510) Unfortunately we do not know anythingabout the reasons for this assassination Marvin S Sweeney assumes that Shal-lum ldquowas likely motivated by an interest in changing Israelrsquos alignment from As-syria to Aramrdquo⁶ But this is to be doubted as during Jeroboam IIrsquos reign therewas no Assyrian attack against Israel On the contrary Jeroboam was able to ex-pand his territory (2Kgs 1425) I prefer Dubovskyacutersquos view that Zechariahrsquos murderis a symptom of the instability of the Northern Kingdom and one of the reasonsfor its eventual downfall⁷

Shallumrsquos reign lasted only for one month (2Kgs 1513) and then he was kil-led by Menahem But this man did not form a conspiracy as Shallum had(151015)⁸ According to Dubovskyacute the biblical author ldquowanted to underlinethe contrast between the coups drsquoeacutetat of Shallum Pekah and Hoshea and ofMenahemrdquo⁹ Perhaps this is an indication that Menahemrsquos action was not unlaw-ful One may take the view that he wanted to rid the country of a murderer on thethrone Menahem came from Tirzah which was in the time before Omri the res-

Grayson Assyrian Rulers A010288 Grayson Assyrian Rulers A01047 8 cf Shuichi Hasegawa Aram and Israel during the Je-huite Dynasty (BerlinBoston MA de Gruyter 2012) 119 Marvin S Sweeney I amp II Kings A Commentary (Louisville KY Westminster John Knox Press2007) 371 Cf Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoSuspicious Similiarities a comparative Study of the Falls of Sa-maria and Jerusalemrdquo in The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah ed Peter DubovskyacuteDominik Markl and Jean-Pierre Sonnet (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2016) 47ndash71 esp 58 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 322ndash26 The author uses the narrative forms לעיו אביו and ךיו but not רשקיו Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reign before the Assyrian Invasion (2 Kings 1514ndash 16)rdquo in Liter-ature as Politics Politics as Literature ed David SVanderhooft and Abraham Winitzer (WinonaLake IN Eisenbrauns 2014) 29ndash45 esp 34 Cf 1Kgs 1527ndash28 169ndash 10 2Kgs 1525 30

356 Georg Hentschel

idence city of Israelrsquos kings (1Kgs 1417 1521 33 166 8ndash9 15 17 f) The expres-sion ldquofrom Tirzahrdquo (2Kgs 1516a) may indicate according to Dubovskyacute ldquothat hestarted his campaign in Tirzah and moved toward Tiphsahrdquosup1⁰ He succeeded inconquering the city of Tiphsah if this name indeed belongs to the originaltextsup1sup1 The majority of the Septuagint manuscripts explain that he ravaged Tiph-sah because ldquoit had not opened its gates to himrdquosup1sup2 But the Hebrew text abstainsfrom an explanation ldquoIndeed he did not (just) breach (it) but struck (it)downrdquosup1sup3 Do we have here an allusion to Solomonrsquos realm who is said to havereigned over the whole territory between Tiphsah and Gaza (1Kgs 54) Buthow does this correspond with the next sentence that Menahem committed cru-elties He is said to have ldquoripped open all pregnant womenrdquo (2Kgs 1516d) Doeshe not perpetrate the same crime as Hazael the king of Aram (812) Menahemrsquosimage is contradictory

A question of historical relevance remains Did Menahem really reach Tiph-sah on the banks of the Euphrates Was he successful in a similar way to Jero-boam II (1425) A campaign towards the east would have been possible only inMenahemrsquos first years ie in 748 BCEsup1⁴ After the accession of the mighty Ti-glath-pileser III (r 745ndash727 BCE) to the Assyrian throne there was no chancefor such an adventure The framework of the Book of Kings on Menahem revealshis weakness He had to pay a heavy tribute to Tiglath-pileser III ldquoHe gave hima thousand talents of silver to obtain his help in strengthening his hold on thekingdomrdquo (1519) Menahemrsquos subjugation is confirmed by Tiglath-pileserrsquos an-nals and also attested on his royal stele from Iransup1⁵ Probably this tribute was

Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reignrdquo 33 Lucianic manuscripts read Ταφωε or Ταφοε ldquowhich corresponds to the city חופת rdquo so Du-bovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reignrdquo 30f Tappuah may be identified with Tell Sheikh Abu Zarad15 km southeast of Nablus The Lucianic manuscripts read the singular of the verb which corresponds to חתפ Dubovskyacute ldquoMenahemrsquos Reignrdquo 42 Georg Hentschel ldquoAlter und Herkunft der Synchronismen in den Koumlnigsbuumlchernrdquo NichtsNeues unter der Sonne Zeitvorstellungen im Alten Testament Festschrift fuumlr Ernst-JoachimWaschke ed Jens Kotjatko-Reeb Benjamin Ziemer and Stefan Schorch (BerlinBoston MA deGruyter 2014) 171ndash85 esp 182 Unfortunately there are mistakes in the dates of his predeces-sors Jeroboam reigned until 749 BCE Zechariah had been killed six months later in 748 BCEShallum died yet in the same year and Menahem began to reign Annals Hayim Tadmor The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria Critical Editionwith Introductions Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem Israel Academy of Sciences andHumanities 1994) 68ndash9 Ann 13 10 = Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada The Royal Inscrip-tions of Tiglath-pileser III (744ndash727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726ndash722 BC) Kings of Assyria (Wi-nona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) no 14 10 Tadmor Inscriptions 89 Ann 27 2 = Tadmor andYamada Royal Inscriptions no 32 2 stele Tadmor Inscriptions 106ndash107 IIIA 5 = Tadmor and


paid in the year 738 BCE Because Menahem himself could not pay the tributehe ldquolaid a levy on all men of wealth in Israel and each had to give the king ofAssyria fifty silver shekelsrdquo (1520) By this levy of course the dissatisfactionof the population increased as Dubovskyacute puts it ldquodrawing on the wallets of72000 nobles must have severely undermined Menahemrsquos popularityrdquosup1⁶ Butthe support of Tiglath-pileser was also very usefulWhen Menahem died ndash short-ly after delivering the tribute ndash his son was able to ascend to the throne of theNorthern Kingdom

Menahemrsquos son Pekahiah reigned for just two years The circumstances ofhis assassination show how difficult the situation had become in the meantimePekahiah was killed ldquoin the safest place of the kingdomrdquo and ldquonot even the mostprotected place of the kingdom ndash the keep of the royal palace in Samaria ndash wassafe enough to protect the king against conspiratorsrdquo as Dubovskyacute stressessup1⁷That was possible because Pekah Pekahiahrsquos assassin belonged to the centreof power He was ldquoPekahiahrsquos third man ie the officer of the kingrsquos entour-agerdquosup1⁸ But Pekah was not alone he headed a conspiracy with fifty men fromGilead at his side and was according to Becking possibly ldquoan exponent of aTransjordan political partyrdquosup1⁹ Tomoo Ishida already discerned ldquoa power strugglebetween Gileadites and the men of Manasseh in the changes of dynastiesrdquosup2⁰

But the regicide was not only the result of tensions among the tribes Peka-hiah followed his father Menahemrsquos foreign policy Is it possible that his murder-er Pekah opposed this and wanted to terminate Israelrsquos subjugation to the Assyr-ians If we want to find out about Pekahrsquos political views we cannot ignorethe campaign against Jerusalem Rezin of Damascus and Pekah went togethersouthwards and besieged Ahaz of Judah (2Kgs 165 Isa 71 2) They wanted toappoint a new king (Isa 75) Can we hypothesise that Ahaz was not willing tojoin their anti-Assyrian coalition To quote John Bright Ahaz ldquosaw no coursesave to appeal to Tiglath-pileser for aidrdquosup2sup1 which turned the tide Pekah and Re-

Yamada Royal Inscriptions no 35 iii 5 Cf Manfred Weippert ldquoMenachem von Israel und seineZeitzeugen in einer Steleninschrift des assyrischen Koumlnigs Tiglathpileser III aus dem IranrdquoZDPV 89 (1973) 26ndash53 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 340 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 328 Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 328 Bob Becking The Fall of Samaria An Historical and Archaeological Study (Leiden Brill1992) 6 Tomoo Ishida The Royal Dynasties in Ancient Israel (BerlinNew York de Gruyter 1977) 176 John Bright A History of Israel (London SCM Press 1977 4th revised edition) 272

358 Georg Hentschel

zinrsquos campaign against Ahaz ndash the so-called Syro-Ephraimitic war ndash failed (2Kgs165 Isa 72)

But are the accounts in 2Kgs 16 and Isa 7 reliable Some scholars doubtthat there ever was a Syro-Ephraimitic war because it is ldquoknown only fromthe Biblerdquosup2sup2 To quote Bustenay Oded ldquoWe do not know of a single clear-cut in-disputable example of a war fought against a state in Syria or Palestine becauseit refused to join an anti-Assyrian alliancerdquosup2sup3 ldquoThe causes of such wars were in-ternal and regional not external and internationalrdquosup2⁴ and ldquoThe Syro-Ephraimitewar then originated in an Arameo-Israelite alliance against Judah and its aimwas to dislodge Judah from Transjordaniardquosup2⁵ This hypothesis presupposes thatldquoAzri-Yau of the land of Yaūdirdquo is identical with the Judean king Azariah or Uz-ziah and that one accepts the idea that he ldquobecame sole master of regions thathad previously been under Israelite or joint Judeo-Israelite rule and rapidlymade himself into the strongest political and military force in Palestine andsouthern Syriardquosup2⁶ However the identification of Azri-Yau with Azariah or Uzziahis very dubioussup2⁷

Odedrsquos final objection against the reality of a Syro-Ephraimitic war concernsthe order of events ldquoIf the primary aim of Damascus and Samaria was to form analliance of states against Assyria it is not clear why they should weaken them-selves by a prolonged war against Jerusalem thereby exposing their northernflank to the Assyrian forcesrdquosup2⁸

Was there ever even a chance for Rezin and Pekah to campaign againstJudah and to besiege Jerusalem The biblical text gives the impression thatthe events immediately followed each other very quickly Rezinrsquos and Pekahrsquoscommon campaign against Jerusalem Ahazrsquos call for help and Tiglath-pileserrsquosvictory In reality however Tiglath-pileser took three years to fight against hiswestern enemies The Assyrian inscriptions enable us to reconstruct Tiglath-pi-leserrsquos campaigns in the years 734 733 and 732 BCsup2⁹ At the very latest when Ti-

Roger Tomes ldquoThe Reason for the Syro-Ephraimite Warrdquo JSOT 59 (1993) 55ndash71 esp 61 Bustenay Oded ldquoThe Historical Background of the Syro-Ephraimitic War ReconsideredrdquoCBQ 34 (1972) 153ndash65 esp 154 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 154 cf Tomes ldquoThe Reason for the Syro-Ephraimite Warrdquo70 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 161 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 160 Cf Herbert Donner Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzuumlgen vol 2(Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1995 2nd edition) 335ndash36 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 153 Peter Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaigns in 734ndash732 BC Historical Background ofIsa 7 2 Kgs 15ndash16 and 2 Chr 27ndash28rdquo Bib 87 (2006) 153ndash70


glath-pileser III started his campaigns in 734 BCE Rezin and Pekah had to with-draw from Jerusalem even if Tiglath-pileser went only against Philistia ieagainst the Levantine coast and the centre of resistance of Gaza The Assyrianking did not immediately attack Rezin as the Book of Kings (169) would haveit but instead followed a strategy of encirclement In the next year in 733BCE he conquered Transjordan and fought against Rezin south of Damascushe ldquowon the battle in the field but was unable to capture hellip Damascusrdquosup3⁰ Oneyear later in 732 BCE he occupied the Galilee (2Kgs 1529) and ldquoturned finallyagainst Damascus captured it and executed Rezinrdquo (2Kgs 169)sup3sup1

The events of the Syro-Ephraimitic war reveal the international power struc-turesup3sup2 As Dubovskyacute puts it ldquoPekah deliberately broke off the natural connec-tions with Judah and formed a coalition with Israelrsquos former enemy ndash Aramrdquosup3sup3As Oded stresses ldquoIn this alliance the dominant partner was the Arameanrdquonot-ing that ldquoRezin is always mentioned before Pekah (2Kgs 1537 165 Isa 71 4 5 82Chr 285ndash6)rdquo he therefore argues that Pekah ldquohad gained the throne throughRezinrsquos favour and active supportrdquosup3⁴ Becking is also convinced that ldquoThe drivingforce behind the revolt of Pekah in 736 BCE must have been the Aramaean kingRazyān of Damascusrdquosup3⁵

Pekahrsquos disastrous policy resulted in his downfall Unfortunately we do notknow for sure who overthrew him The inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III leave itopen whether the Assyrian forces or the people of Samaria brought him downHowever according to the Bible it was Hoshea who killed him (2Kgs 1530)

3 Hoshearsquos International Policy and the Timeafter Him

Did Hoshea turn away from the anti-Assyrian policy of his predeceesor PekahAccording to the Assyrian inscriptions Tiglath-pileser appointed Hoshea as

Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo 160 Dubovskyacute ldquoTiglath-pileser IIIrsquos Campaignsrdquo 161 Joachim Begrich ldquoDer Syrisch-Ephraimitische Krieg und seine weltpolitischen Zusam-menhaumlngerdquo ZDMG 83 (1929) 213ndash37 esp 220 challenged the opinion that this war was an iso-lated event expressing his own take on the matter already in the title of his article Dubovskyacute ldquoWhy Did the Northern Kingdom Fallrdquo 341 Oded ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 163 Becking Fall of Samaria 6

360 Georg Hentschel

king of Israelsup3⁶ He trusted him to pursue a friendly policy towards AssyriaTherefore Israel remained a vassal state and did not become an Assyrian prov-ince unlike Damascus Hoshea paid his first tribute in 731 BCE when Tiglath-pi-leser III was already far away campaigning against the town Sarrabanu in south-ern Babyloniasup3⁷ The Bible however does not present Hoshea as a ruler who wasappointed by the Assyrian overlord Tiglath-pileser According to 2Kgs 1530Hoshea himself formed a conspiracy against Pekah attacked him killed himand usurped the throne As Gershon Galil stresses ldquoConsequently the authorof Kings believed that Hoshea was not an Assyrian vassal at the beginning ofhis reignrdquosup3⁸

Did something change after Tiglath-pileserrsquos death when his son Shalma-neser V came to power during the month of Ṭebet in 727 BCE That is at leastthe impression we get in the framework for Hoshea (2Kgs 173) ldquoShalmaneserking of Assyria marched against him and Hoshea became his vassal and ren-dered him tributerdquoDid Shalmaneser really conduct a campaign against HosheaNadav Narsquoaman is convinced ldquothat v 3 most probably refers to unrest and per-haps even rebellion that broke out in the West upon the death of the great em-peror and the accession of his son Shalmaneser Vrdquosup3⁹ However according to KyleLawson Younger Jr the Assyrian Eponym Chronicles do not mention a campaignagainst the West during the years 728 and 727⁴⁰ Moreover there was not enoughtime for a military clash Shalmaneserrsquos accession year covered only few months(25 Ṭebet ndash Nisan 726) and Shalmaneser remained in his first year ldquoin thelandrdquo⁴sup1 The biblical text in 2Kgs 173 corrects the impression that Hoshea hadbecome an independent king by himself (1530) and emphasises that Hosheawas Shalmaneserrsquos vassal and paid his tribute to the new great emperor⁴sup2

Tadmor Inscriptions Summ 4 15primendash19prime = Tadmor and Yamada Royal Inscriptions no 4215primendash 19prime fragmentary parallel Tadmor Inscriptions Summ 13 17primendash 18prime = Tadmor and YamadaRoyal Inscriptions no 44 17primendash18prime Cf Manfred Weippert Historisches Textbuch zum Alten Testa-ment (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2010) 295 Tadmor Inscriptions Summ 9 rev 9ndash11 = Tadmor and Yamada Royal Inscriptions no 49rev 9ndash 11 Gershon Galil ldquoThe Last Years of the Kingdom of Israel and the Fall of Samariardquo CBQ 57(1995) 52ndash64 esp 63 Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Historical Background of the Fall of Samaria (720 BC)rdquoBib 71 (1990)206ndash25 esp 214 Cf Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Researchrdquo CBQ 61(1999) 461ndash82 esp 464 Cf Lawson Younger ldquoFall of Samariardquo 464 Cf John H Hayes and Jeffrey K Kuan ldquoThe Final Years of Samaria (730ndash720 BC)rdquo Bib 72(1991) 153ndash81 esp 163 2Kgs 173 involves ldquoa voluntary submission without military encounterrdquo


The next biblical verse (174) makes it clear that this situation did not con-tinue during Shalmaneserrsquos reign At some point the Assyrian king discoveredthat Hoshea had sent messengers to So the king of Egypt⁴sup3 and did no longerpay his tribute Shalmaneser could not tolerate such behaviour How did Hosheaget caught up in this Egypt was at that time a divided country that could nothelp Israel to fight against Assyria⁴⁴ There was no internal or external crisisin Assyria at that time Hoshearsquos decision was a far-reaching political mistake

The biblical author continues with a surprising turn of events (2Kgs 174c d)ldquoThe king of Assyria arrested him and put him in prisonrdquoWhy was it so easy toarrest Hoshea Did he simply obey an order of the Assyrian king⁴⁵ Why didhe not remain behind the walls of his capital city of Samaria⁴⁶ Did he go tothe Assyrian king because he wanted to explain the difficult atmosphere insideSamaria to him Galil supports this interpretation ldquoAt that time Hoshea proba-bly went forth from Samaria to meet the king of Assyria in a last-minute attemptto attain a compromise and prevent the conquest of the Israelite cities and thefall of Samariardquo⁴⁷ But can we trust in the reliability of the biblical narratorHe probably wrote down this detail many years later On the other side wecan compare the fate of Josiah of Judah (2Kgs 2329) whom Pharaoh Necho put todeath ldquoas soon as he had seen himrdquo⁴⁸ Moreover we should bear in mind thatHoshea was perhaps not the driving force in the insurrection against AssyriaHoshearsquos imprisonment did not break the resistance of the Samarians They re-mained stubborn enemies of Assyria even when Sargon II began to rule as weare yet to see Perhaps the people of Samaria had put Hoshea under pressureto send messengers to So in Egypt If we take all this into consideration then

There is a discussion about the name ldquoSordquo Is it the name of a city or the name of a king inEgypt From the use of the preposition לא we can see that So is not a toponym cf Bernd UlrichSchipper ldquoWer war So Koumlnig von AumlgyptenrdquoBN 92 (1998) 71ndash84 esp 74ndash75 The most powerfulrulers at that time were the Nubian leader Piye and Tefnakht a prince on the western side of theDelta But ldquofrom a geographic point of view Osorkonrsquos IVrsquos kingdom was the nearest Delta prin-cipality to the land of Israelrdquo so Pnina Galpaz-Feller ldquoIs That So (2 Kings XVII 4)rdquo RB 107(2000) 338ndash47 esp 344 The historical circumstances point to Osorkon IV argues SchipperldquoWer war Sordquo 82 pointing out that also from a linguistical point of view it is at least possiblethat So is an abbreviation of the name Wsrkn Cf Donner Geschichte des Volkes Israel 345 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 218 Hayes and Kuan ldquoFinal Years of Samariardquo 162 think however that Hoshea had been takenldquoin the course of some military conflictrdquo Galil ldquoLast Years of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 60 Similarly Jeremy Hughes Secrets of theTimes Myth and History in Biblical Chronology (Sheffield JSOT Press 1990) 205ndash206 Hoshealdquoapparently decided to abandon his revolt and went to offer his submission and pay tributerdquo Cf Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 218

362 Georg Hentschel

it is at least possible to assume that Hoshea had wanted to negotiate with theAssyrian king That the latter did not kill Hoshea is perhaps an argument in fa-vour of this interpretation

The Samarians did not install a new king instead of Hoshea⁴⁹ but continuedtheir resistance The Assyrian king invaded the country and besieged Samaria forthree years (2Kgs 175) ldquoIn the ninth year of Hoshea he captured Samariardquo (2Kgs176a cf 18910) But it is doubtful whether the Assyrians needed three years tobesiege Samaria and to capture it The archaeological evidence points against itHerrmann Michael Niemann emphasised ldquothat there are no traces of destructionthat could be attributed to the Assyrians between 724 and 720 BCErdquo⁵⁰ Samariawas not a mighty stronghold ldquoOnly the palace residence was fortified hellip to resistfor example an Aramean razzia or an attack from regional or local rival but thelack of water would not permit a long siegerdquo⁵sup1 As Galil states ldquoThe Assyrianarmy encamped in Samaria was probably of limited scope and the siege maypossibly have turned into a blockaderdquo⁵sup2

Which Assyrian king punished Hoshea and captured Samaria for the firsttime Shalmaneser V or Sargon II The biblical text mentions Shalmaneser justone time (173a) and talks later about the ldquoAssyrian kingrdquo (174a c 5a 6a) I as-sume that it probably was Shalmaneser V as this is in accordance with the Bab-ylonian Chronicle which mentions only one event during Shalmaneserrsquos reignSamaria was taken⁵sup3 While this much is clear the exact meaning of the verbused here ndash iḫtepi (perfect of ḫepucirc) ndash is widely disputed whereas eg NadavNarsquoaman stresses ldquothat other verbs were selected to designate the breaking ofwalls after a siegerdquo⁵⁴ Bob Becking is convinced that the Babylonian Chroniclerefers to an actual capture of Samariardquo⁵⁵ In any case it seems clear that Shalma-neser was able to inflict a substantial defeat on the people of Samaria

We come to the same conclusion if we take the chronological data into ac-count The Assyrian king captured Samaria ldquoin the ninth year of Hosheardquo(176a) That was Hoshearsquos last year on the throne because he reigned no longer

Cf Galil ldquoLast Years of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 60 Herrmann Michael Niemann ldquoRoyal Samaria ndash Capital or Residence or The Foundation ofthe City of Samaria by Sargon IIrdquo in Ahab Agonistes The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty edLester L Grabbe (London TampT Clark 2007) 184ndash207 esp 189 Niemann ldquoRoyal Samariardquo 201 Galil ldquoLast Years of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 60 Babylonian Chronicle 1 i 28 see Albert Kirk Grayson Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles(Locust Valley NY Augustin 1975) 69ndash87 Narsquoaman ldquoHistorical Backgroundrdquo 211 Becking Fall of Samaria 25


than nine years (171)When he paid his first tribute to Tiglath-pileser III his firstregnal year had already begun That was probably in the year 731 BCE He startedtherefore his ninth year in 723 BCE Because Shalmaneser V reigned until themonth of Tebet 722 BCE the capture of Samaria must have still fallen into hisreign This result does not change of course if Hoshea had been imprisoned be-fore his ninth year

While no extant Assyrian inscription ascribes the Fall of Samaria to Shal-maneser there are many texts that unanimously testify that Sargon II capturedSamaria and deported its people⁵⁶ However these events belong to another con-text When Sargon II seized power in 722 BCE there was wide resistance andBabylon and Elam rose against Assyria⁵⁷ but he could stop their advances Inhis second year (720 BCE) he fought against a rebellion in the western Assyrianprovinces including Damascus and Samerina (Ass Samaria) centred on Ha-math and headed by Ilu-birsquodi The people of Samaria did not want to face theloss of independence They reacted in a similar way to what they had doneafter Hoshearsquos imprisonment Sargon II defeated the rebellion and also SamariaI take it that the references refer to the conquest of Samaria Sargon II knew thestubborn resistance of Samaria and deported therefore more than 27000 peopleas he claimed in his inscriptions He became the ldquoconqueror of Samaria and thewhole land of Bit-Humriardquo⁵⁸ It is interesting as Gershon Galil has pointed outthat Sargonrsquos inscriptions do not mention Hoshea or any other king of Samaria⁵⁹

4 Conclusions

Did Hoshearsquos predecessors pursue a disastrous foreign policy Dubovskyacute showedthat several causes contributed to the downfall of the Northern Kingdom Themain danger was surely the great power Assyria especially after the enthrone-ment of Tiglath-pileser III (r 745ndash727 BCE) Did Israelrsquos kings respect the greatking Menahem submitted to Assyria at the end of his reign in 738 BCE andpaid a heavy tribute (1519) Because he laid a levy on all men of wealth in Israel(1520) he probably provoked or increased anti-Assyrian feelings among the peo-

All known texts are collected in Frahmrsquos chapter in this volume For a selection in translationcf TUAT I4 379 382ndash83 385ndash87 Bright A History of Israel 278 Threshold Inscription IV 31ndash2 (= Frahmrsquos Text 18) Cf Niemann ldquoRoyal Samariardquo 194 Galil ldquoLast Years of the Kingdom of Israelrdquo 55 cites the Nimrud Prism (= Frahmrsquos Text 8)passage regarding Sargonrsquos enemies in Samaria and asks ldquoWhy is there a general referenceto the Samarians without mentioning the name of their king (as was usual)rdquo

364 Georg Hentschel

ple of Israel Therefore it was easier for Pekah to overthrow Pekahiah Mena-hemrsquos son Pekah pursued an anti-Assyrian policy That can be concludedfrom the common campaign against Jerusalem headed by Rezin the Arameanking of Damascus (165 Isa 712) Rezin and Pekah wanted to appoint a newking in Jerusalem (Isa 75) and to enlarge their anti-Assyrian coalition Howeverthe operation failed Pekah lost several towns in the North Galilee and Gilead(1529) and was left with only the small vassal-state Ephraim Pekahrsquos disastrouspolicy resulted in his downfall even though we do not know who overthrew himTiglath-pileser the people of Samaria or his successor Hoshea (cf 1530)

Which foreign policy pursued Hoshea Tiglath-pileser claimed that he ap-pointed Hoshea That suggests that Hoshea wanted to end Pekahrsquos anti-Assyrianpolicy Hoshea paid the tribute ldquoyear by yearrdquo (174) But in the end he sent mes-sengers to an Egyptian ruler perhaps Osorkon IVWhy did he risk such an adven-ture Did the court or the people of Samaria put Hoshea under pressure Whydid he meet with Shalmaneser V who then imprisoned him The people of Sama-ria continued their resistance anyway Samaria was captured for the first time inHoshearsquos ninth year when he did not reign anymore (723 BCE) The anti-Assyrianattitude flared up again when resistence rose in the western provinces of the As-syrian Empire against Sargon II in his second year (720 BCE) Now Israel wentdown because the leadership of Samaria did not recognise the limitations oftheir might and failed to acknowledge the great power of the Assyrians



Martti Nissinen

The Book of Hosea and the Last Daysof the Northern Kingdom

The Methodological Problem

1 How Can We Reach the Eighth Century BCE

The essays published in this volume demonstrate that the historical reconstruc-tion of the last decades of the Kingdom of Israel is a meaningful enterpriseSome significant problems notwithstanding it is possible to base such a recon-struction on a number of biblical and Assyrian textsWhatever took place withinthe Northern Kingdom during the very last years of its existence is a tricky ques-tion however because there are hardly any sources where such knowledgecould be drawn from Nadav Narsquoaman has recently argued that ldquoHosea is theonly available source for discussing the kingdomrsquos internal affairs in the secondhalf of the eighth century BCE hence the great importance of elucidating the po-tential contribution of Hosea for the historical investigationrdquosup1 This statement ofcourse implies a great deal of confidence in the possibility that significant partsof the Book of Hosea actually date to the late eighth century BCE which evident-ly is no longer a matter of course

The question of the dating of not only the Book of Hosea but also of theprophetic books in general has become a serious and manifold methodologicalproblemsup2 How can the eighth century datings or any datings predating the old-

Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Source for the Last Days of the Kingdom of IsraelrdquoBZ 59 (2015) 232ndash56 esp 234 For recent discussion see eg Reinhard G Kratz The Prophets of Israel (Winona Lake INEisenbrauns 2015) id ldquoProbleme der Prophetenforschungrdquo in id Prophetenstudien KleineSchriften II (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2011) 3ndash 17 Brad E Kelle ldquoThe Phenomenon of IsraeliteProphecy in Contemporary Scholarshiprdquo CurBR 12 (2014) 275ndash320 Joumlrg Jeremias ldquoDas Raumltselder Schriftprophetierdquo ZAW 125 (2013) 93ndash 117 David M Carr The Formation of the HebrewBible A New Reconstruction (New York Oxford University Press 2011) 317ndash38 Erhard BlumldquoIsraels Prophetie im altorientalischen Kontext Anmerkungen zu neueren religionsgeschichtli-chen Thesenrdquo in ldquoFrom Ebla to Stellenboschrdquo Syro-Palestinian Religions and the Hebrew Bibleed Izak Cornelius and Louis C Jonker (Wiesbaden Harrassowitz 2008) 81ndash 115 Hans M Bar-stad ldquoWhat Prophets Do Reflections on Past Reality in the Book of Jeremiahrdquo in Prophecy in theBook of Jeremiah ed Hans M Barstad and Reinhard G Kratz (Berlin de Gruyter 2009) 10ndash32

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-018

est manuscript evidence be methodologically justified Can the eighth centurybe assumed as the date of any part of the Book of Hosea unless the oppositeis proven Can textual growth caused by centuries of transmission be identifiedin the text available to us so that more or less precise dates could be given to thetextual layers thus recognized Or should one rather date the book as a wholemdash and if so to which period of time How can the material in the Book of Hoseabe compared to other sources biblical as well as non-biblical in a historicallyresponsible way The view of the Book of Hosea as a historical document de-pends essentially on the answers given to these methodological questionswhich I attempt to address in this chaptersup3

First of all in my view datings of the Book of Hosea or any prophetic bookshould not be based on default positions preferring the alleged lifetime of theprophet after whom the book is named Every dating must be argued for we can-not date texts for the sake of convenience Any principle of the type ldquoinnocentuntil proven guiltyrdquo should not be applied to texts that are neither accused ofanything nor in need of being defended Therefore the practice of dating Ho-seanic passages routinely to the eighth century without an argument to justifyit is unacceptable This practice may emerge from the often unspoken preferenceof the prophet for the later editors early datings for late datings or textual unityfor disunity⁴ Preferences like this are however difficult to reconcile with thedocumented evidence of textual transmission Drawing historical conclusionsfrom the Book of Hosea (or any other book) on the basis of such default positionsis likely to introduce errors into the historical record

Uwe Becker ldquoDie Wiederentdeckung des Prophetenbuches Tendenzen und Aufgaben der gegen-waumlrtigen Prophetenforschungrdquo BTZ 21 (2004) 30ndash60 Cf my previous musings in eg Martti Nissinen Ancient Prophecy Near Eastern Biblicaland Greek Perspectives (Oxford Oxford University Press 2017) 144ndash67 id ldquoComparing Prophet-ic Sources Principles and a Test Caserdquo in Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel ed JohnDay (London TampT Clark 2010) 3ndash24 id ldquoThe Historical Dilemma of Biblical Prophetic Stud-iesrdquo in Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah ed Hans M Barstad and Reinhard G Kratz (Berlin deGruyter 2009) 103ndash20 For a good representation of this view see Francis I Andersen and David Noel FreedmanHosea A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City NY Doubleday1980) 59 ldquoIn both cases [scil the unity of the Book of Hosea and the integrity of the text]our premise and point of departure are conservative that the book is essentially the work ofa single person and that the text is basically sound These are hardly ringing affirmationsthey are more like defensive desperation If the opposite were true if many hands and voicescould be found from the book then we would have the thankless and ultimately fruitlesstask of apportioning the work among a variety of people whose existence is hypothetical andwhose only distinguishing mark is some obscurity or inconsistency in the textrdquo

370 Martti Nissinen

How could such errors then be avoided At the very least we must be awareof the nature of our source material The oldest ldquohardrdquo evidence of the existenceof the Book of Hosea (like any other book of the Hebrew Bible) comes from theDead Sea Scrolls Parts of the Book of Hosea have been preserved in three scrollsthat is 4QXIIc 4QXIId and 4QXIIg all dating to the first half of the first centuryBCE⁵ This material alone together with the Old Greek translation of the Bookof Hosea which in some cases is arguably translated from a Hebrew text differentfrom the Masoretic text⁶ demonstrates that textual transmission not only pre-served ancient texts but also changed them⁷ We may assume that the textstransmitted in the Scrolls often date back several centuries but the documentedevidence of textual growth makes it impossible to believe that any of the avail-able manuscripts provides us with a text that had remained unchanged for sucha long time⁸ In the case of Hosea the documented changes are usually less thandramatic but they testify to actual scribal interventions to the text that cannot bedismissed either⁹ This is why any dating beyond the age of the extant manu-script material requires a diachronic theory concerning the transmission of thegiven text through a long period of time Creating such a theory however imme-diately raises further methodological questions While extant textual evidenceshows that the idea of textual growth is not based on imagination detectingthe early phases of textual transmission on the basis of the text itself withoutempirical evidence is a matter of ongoing debate

See Brian Webster ldquoChronological Index of the Texts from the Judaean Desertrdquo in The Textsfrom the Judaean Desert Indices and an Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Ser-ies ed Emanuel Tov (Oxford Clarendon Press 2002) 393 397 Taken together these fragmentsinclude the following verses at least partially 16ndash9 21ndash5 13ndash19 22ndash25 31ndash5 41ndash 19 51 638ndash 11 71 12ndash 16 81 91ndash4 9ndash 17 101ndash 14 112ndash5 6ndash 11 121ndash 15 131 3ndash13 15 141 3ndash6 9ndash 10see the convenient translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls material in Martin Abegg Peter Flint andEugene Ulrich The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (New York Harper 1999) 420ndash27 For instance the Greek text of Hos 134 must have been translated from a Vorlagemuch longerthan the MT but similar to 4QXIIg For 4QXIIc see Hanne von Weissenberg ldquoChanging Scripture Scribal Corrections in MS4QXIIcrdquo in Changes in Scripture Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the SecondTemple Period ed Hanne von Weissenberg Juha Pakkala and Marko Marttila (Berlin de Gruyter2011) 247ndash71 For examples of documented evidence of textual growth see Reinhard Muumlller Juha Pakkalaand Bas ter Haar Romeny Evidence of Editing Growth and Change of Texts in the Hebrew Bible(Atlanta GA SBL Press 2014) Cf von Weissenberg ldquoChanging Scripturerdquo 269 ldquoEven the smaller individual scribal addi-tions and corrections in manuscripts illustrate the minor forms of growth in the texts They attestto the scribal contribution to the development of the texts that became the Hebrew Biblerdquo


Diachronic analysis is of course the most traditional way of approachingthe Book of Hosea in academic biblical studies and has been practiced bymany scholars over the last decades myself included Traditionally the dia-chronic enterprise has been motivated by the search of the original messageof the prophet by way of separating later additions from the original text andidentifying the oldest material which is often virtually equated with the wordsonce uttered by the prophet Hosea The ripest fruit carried by this branch ofmethodology can be found in the work of Joumlrg Jeremias according to whomthe essential contents of the Book of Hosea date back to the last years of theNorthern Kingdom and the time immediately following the catastrophe ldquoDasBuch Hosea hat seine entscheidende Praumlgung im untergegangenen Nordreich er-haltenrdquosup1⁰ According to Jeremias the earliest form of the book is essentially thework of his disciples who had collected and interpreted the prophetrsquos wordswhereas the book as we know it was edited and augmented in Judah after thecollapse of the Northern Kingdom A similar line of thought has been followedby many scholarssup1sup1

Another type of diachronic analysis of the Book of Hosea is not concernedwith finding the prophetrsquos message or even the original core of the book but reck-on with a complicated process of redaction andor Fortschreibung over a long pe-riod of timesup1sup2 These studies have typically identified only scattered remains ofmaterial datable to the eighth century BCE shifting the emphasis from theprophet and his disciples to the scribal circles of the monarchic and postmonar-chic periods

Jeremias ldquoDas Raumltsel der Schriftprophetierdquo 113 cf many well-known works of Joumlrg Jeremiaseg Studien zur Theologie des Alten Testaments (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2015 ed FriedhelmHartenstein and Jutta Krispenz) 269ndash87 (= ldquoDie Anfaumlnge der Schriftprophetierdquo 1996) and311ndash25 (= ldquoProphetenwort und Prophetenbuch Zur Rekonstruktion muumlndlicher Verkuumlndungder Prophetenrdquo 1990) Hosea und Amos Studien zu den Anfaumlngen des Dodekapropheton (Tuumlbin-gen Mohr Siebeck 1996) Der Prophet Hosea (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1983) Eg Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Sourcerdquo 255ndash56 dates Hosearsquos prophecies to thetime of Hoshea the last king of Israel and the earliest scroll to the time immediately afterthe Assyrian annexation of the kingdom (720 BCE) Eg Roman Vielhauer Das Werden des Buches Hosea eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Unter-suchung (Berlin de Gruyter 2007) Susanne Rudnig-Zelt Hoseastudien Redaktionskritische Un-tersuchungen zur Genese des Hoseabuches (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2006) HenrikPfeiffer Das Heiligtum von Bethel im Spiegel des Hoseabuches (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ru-precht 1999) Martti Nissinen Prophetie Redaktion und Fortschreibung im Hoseabuch Studienzum Werdegang eines Prophetenbuches im Lichte von Hos 4 und 11 (Kevelaer Butzon amp Berckerand Neukirchen-Vluyn Neukirchener Verlag 1991) Gale A Yee Composition and Redaction inthe Book of Hosea a Redaction Critical Investigation (Atlanta GA Scholars Press 1987) cf Rein-hard G Kratz ldquoDie Redaktion der Prophetenbuumlcherrdquo in id Prophetenstudien 32ndash48

372 Martti Nissinen

Diachronic studies reconstructing the emergence of the Book of Hosea havedone their best to remove the illusionary innocence with regard to the textualtransmission and its relation to historical events Since however no two schol-ars arrive at the same conclusion but the results typically vary from study tostudy many colleagues have found it difficult to decide on whose analysis isthe more reliable one Therefore the possibility of unfolding the process of tex-tual growth with a precision that could reveal even relative datings of each indi-vidual passage in the book has been seriously questioned The ever-changing re-sults of diachronic analyses have been found frustrating enough for manyscholars to abandon them altogether and to read the texts synchronically givingup the attempt to reconstruct the hypothetical phases of textual transmission

Textual growth in prophetic books is not usually denied altogether althoughacknowledging its existence often does not go beyond lip-service Some scholarssay they are reading the ldquofinal formrdquo of the text however there is no such thingas the final form of any biblical book unless modern editions of the Masoretictext are regarded as suchsup1sup3 Of course any given form of the text can form thebasis of an analysis that does not attempt to go historically beyond the textualwitness itself However if we want to relate the Book of Hosea historicallywith the last days of the Northern Kingdom the so-called ldquofinal formrdquo readingsclearly lead to an impasse

A synchronic reading of the Book of Hosea does not as such require an eighth-century BCE setting even though this very often seems to be assumed A synchron-ic analysis can take the text as the product of postmonarchical readerships relat-ing the text of the Book of Hosea to a later historical period when one can supposethe text to have reached more or less the shape known to us from existing textualevidence Thus for instance Ehud Ben Zvi consistently reads the book as theproduct of the literati of the late Persian periodsup1⁴ This way of reading the text nei-ther denies the possibility that some parts of the book indeed have earlier originsnor enables sorting these parts out Historical links can be made to the time chos-en as the setting of the alleged (re‐)readership of the book but historical connec-tions with the events of the eighth century BCE fall entirely out of scope

Cf eg Eugene Ulrich ldquoOur Sharper Focus on the Bible and Theology Thanks to the DeadSea Scrollsrdquo CBQ 66 (2004) 1ndash24 Anneli Aejmelaeus ldquoLicence to Kill Deut 1310 and the Pre-requisites of Textual Criticismrdquo in Verbum et calamus Semitic and Related Studies in Honour ofthe Sixtieth Birthday of Professor Tapani Harviainen ed Hannu Juusola Juha Laulainen andHeikki Palva (Helsinki Finnish Oriental Society 2004) 1ndash22 Ehud Ben Zvi Hosea (FOTL 21 A1 Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 2005) cf James M Bos Re-considering the Date and Provenance of the Book of Hosea The Case of Persia-Period Yehud(LHBOTS 580 London Bloomsbury 2013)


The methodological problem of relating the Book of Hosea to the last days ofthe Northern Kingdom thus consists of the following components

(1) The oldest manuscript evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls is enough todemonstrate that textual development and growth took place however comingfrom the first century BCE it documents only the very latest phases of textualtransmission and does not help to date individual passages of the book toolder periods

(2) There are good grounds to assume that the text of the Book of Hosea ex-isted in some form several centuries earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls The bookis one of the ldquoTwelve Prophetsrdquo already in the oldest textual witnesses but onecan assume that the books included in this collection existed as individual scrollsbefore they were joined together in several phases and that each phase of trans-mission is likely to have transformed the textsup1⁵ However the late date of the ear-liest textual witnesses makes it impossible simply to equate the extant textual evi-dence with any earlier form of the text The Book of Hosea as we know it is alreadypart of a larger composition and the product of a long chain of textual transmis-sion but no documented evidence is available to help with the reconstruction ofthis process This is essentially due to the tendency of the texts themselves to hiderather than to reveal their editorial historysup1⁶

(3) If we want to establish a direct historical connection from the Book ofHosea to the last days of the Northern Kingdom we should be able to date atleast some parts of Hosea to this period of time Diachronic studies detectingthe oldest parts of the Book of Hosea have yielded exact results but thesehave been varying enough to raise suspicions about the viability of even the di-achronic methodology The ever-changing results of ever-greater precision havebeen seen as pointing towards problems in the method itself But the task cannot

For theories concerning the history of redaction of the ldquoBook of the Twelverdquo see eg JakobWoumlhrle Die fruumlhen Sammlungen des Zwoumllfprophetenbuches Entstehung und Komposition (Berlinde Gruyter 2006) Aaron Schart Die Entstehung des Zwoumllfprophetenbuches Neubearbeitungenvon Amos im Rahmen schriftenuumlbergreifender Redaktionsprozesse (Berlin de Gruyter 1998)James D Nogalski Literary Precursors to the Book of the Twelve (Berlin de Gruyter 1993) cfBen Zvi who finds it impossible to reconstruct redactional processes from the existing textFor two different views of the ldquoTwelve Hypothesisrdquo see Ehud Ben Zvi and James D NogalskiTwo Sides of a Coin Juxtaposing Views on Interpreting the Book of the TwelveThe Twelve Prophet-ic Books (with an introduction by Thomas Roumlmer Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press 2009) According to Ehud Ben Zvi ldquothe ongoing process of redaction was not bent on promoting orarchiving and analyzing itself instead its function was to shape a series of texts in which thelast if successful was meant to supersede and erase the memory of the previous onerdquo (ldquoIsthe Twelve Hypothesis Likely from an Ancient Readerrsquos Perspectiverdquo in Ben Zvi and NogalskiTwo Sides of a Coin 46ndash96 esp 59)

374 Martti Nissinen

be fulfilled by way of synchronic reading either unless the book as a whole isdated to the 730sndash720s which is not viable for reasons just mentioned

So have we ended up in a cul-de-sac if synchronic analysis is not the way togo and the results of diachronic studies are found to be disappointing what elsecan we do other than give up entirely on the task of connecting the Book ofHosea with the last days of the Kingdom of Israel Or is there a historically re-sponsible way of doing this

2 Historical Echoes from the Eighth Century

Perhaps we could try circumventing the problems of diachronic methodology byway of looking for clues in the text that seem to point towards an eighth-centurydate and if possible comparing such clues with the available historical data ofthe last days of the kingdom of Israel If they seem to fit this documentary envi-ronment they could be dated to the same period of time The best candidates foran early date would be passages that do not show clear signs of intertextual in-fluence and are not to be taken as Fortschreibung of earlier texts but rather asbelonging to the source materials of an early collection upon which the Bookof Hosea has grown

As many contributions to this volume demonstrate the fall of Samaria andthe subsequent de- and repopulations of the area can indeed be confirmed byAssyrian sources and even by archaeological evidencesup1⁷ The problem is ratherhow to reconstruct the internal affairs of the kingdom of Israel of which thereis no documentation outside of or even within the Hebrew Bible The followingthree examples may illustrate the case

(1) A contemporary reflection of a disturbing political event could perhaps befound in Hos 73ndash7 a highly enigmatic passage that seems to reflect on the murder

For archaeological evidence of the devastation see Zvi Gal Lower Galilee during the Iron Age(Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 1992) 108ndash 109 Cf Avraham Faust ldquoSettlement Economy andDemography under Assyrian Rule in the West The Territories of the Former Kingdom of Israel asa Test Caserdquo JAOS 135 (2015) 765ndash89 who concludes that the Assyrians ldquodid not really careabout the fate of the areas they conquered They carried off whatever they could and their invest-ment was minimalrdquo (782) However the Assyrians did not just plunder but also for examplelooked after the water supply in Samaria as reported in a letter from the time of Sargon IISimo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II Part I Letters from Assyria and the West (Helsin-ki Helsinki University Press 1987) no 255 According to Angelika Berlejung ldquoThe Assyrians inthe West Assyrianization Colonialism Indifference or Developmental Policyrdquo in Congress Vol-ume Helsinki 2010 ed Martti Nissinen (Leiden Brill 2012) 21ndash60 esp 48) ldquo[s]uccess was max-imal profit with minimal investmentrdquo


of a king perhaps one of the successors of Jeroboam II Of the last kings of Israelonly Menahem is said to have died peacefully whereas his predecessors Zechariahand Shallum as well as his followers Pekahiah and Pekah were killed A rather la-conic report of the four coups drsquoeacutetat that took place after Jeroboam II can be foundin 2Kgs 158ndash31 a passage probably based on court chronicles that were used assources of the Deuteronomistic Historysup1⁸ Hos 73ndash7 seems to give a metaphoricaccount of the day when one of the kings was murdered The actors ldquomakegladrdquo (73) the unsuspecting king and his officials who get drunk presumablyin the privacy of the royal palace They become easy prey for the murdererswho compared with a heated oven just wait ldquofrom the kneading of the doughuntil it is leavenedrdquo that is for the opportunity to ldquodevour their rulersrdquo (77) Com-pared to the account of 2Kgs such an event could best be identified with the mur-der of Pekahiah committed by his captain (šālicircš) Pekah who conspired againsthim with fifty Gileadites and attacked him in the citadel of the palace (2Kgs1525)sup1⁹ This is what I argued in my masterrsquos thesis in 1984 and I would stilllike to agree with myself The passage is probably neither interpreting a pre-exist-ing text in the Book of Hosea nor is it dependent on another biblical text outsidethe book hence it could belong to the material from which the early version of thebook is composedsup2⁰ However I have to admit that the link between Hos 73ndash7 andPekahiahrsquos murder derives from what is visible through the keyhole provided by2Kgs 1525 The two sources seem to connect nicely but the connection dependsentirely on what we happen to see

(2) Further echoes from the last days of the Northern Kingdom either con-temporary or slightly later can be heard in passages of the Book of Hoseathat reflect the Fall of Samaria The demise of the Northern Kingdom or Ephraim(the name may refer to the truncated kingdom in the time of the last king Hosh-easup2sup1) is reflected in several passages that sound like fragments of laments(910ndash 17 111ndash5) Some passages in the Book of Hosea could be imagined to

For court chronicles as the sources of the Deuteronomistic history see Lester L Grabbe 1 amp 2Kings An Introduction and Study Guide History and Story in Ancient Israel (London Bloomsbury2017) 21ndash28 cf eg Ernst Wuumlrthwein Die Buumlcher der Koumlnige 1 Koumln 17ndash2 Koumln 25 (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1984) 376ndash84 Pekahiah has not been among the prime suspects in this murder case see however AndrewAlexander Macintosh A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (Edinburgh TampT Clark1997) 256 Cf Vielhauer Das Werden des Buches Hosea 86ndash92 according to whom verses 75ndash6 goback to oral words of northern origin and the remaining verses to the oldest written layer(erste Verschriftung) Rudnig-Zelt Hoseastudien 212ndash30 sees a pre-exilic core in the passage(verses 74b 5b) however without a reference to the murder of a king Thus Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Sourcerdquo 238ndash39

376 Martti Nissinen

go back to contemporary laments for instance Hos 105ndash8 could be based onsomething like the followingsup2sup2

l [lsquoglwt byt rsquown] For [the calf of Beth-Awensup2sup3]ygwrw škn šmrwn the inhabitants of Samaria tremble

ky rsquobl lsquolyw lsquomw Its people mourn for itwkmryw lsquolyw ygylw its priests wail over it[lsquol kbwdw ky glh mmnw] [over its glory that has departed from itsup2⁴]

gm rsquowtw lrsquošwr ywbl The thing itself is carried to Assyriamnḥh lmlky rb as tribute to the Great Kingsup2⁵

bšnh rsquoprym yqḥ Ephraim has received shamewybwš yśrrsquol mlsquoṣtw and Israel is ashamed for his own counsel

ndmh šmrwn mlkh Samaria and its king perishkqṣp lsquol pny mym like a splinter on the face of the waters

[wnšmdw bmwt rsquown ḥṭrsquot yśrrsquol [The high places of Awen the sin of Israel shall bedestroyed

qwṣ wdrdr ylsquolh lsquol mzbḥwtm] Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars]sup2⁶

wrsquomrw lhrym kswnw They shall say to the mountains ldquoCover usrdquowlgblsquowt nplw lsquolynw and to the hills ldquoFall on usrdquo

This reconstruction is based on my analysis in Nissinen Prophetie Redaktion und Fortschrei-bung 309ndash 12 cf the different reconstructions of Pfeiffer Das Heiligtum von Bethel 103ndash 17Viel-hauer Das Werden des Hoseabuches 165ndash72 Melanie Koumlhlmoos Bet-El ndash Erinnerungen an eineStadt Perspektiven der alttestamentlichen Bet-El-Uumlberlieferung (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 2007)126ndash31 The peculiar and pejorative expression lsquoeglocirct Becirct-āwen (pl fem) is probably inspired by theDeuteronomistic polemics against the calf of Bethel replacing the original name of the object towhich the sg masc suffixes in the following bicolon refer This sentence probably serves as a secondary explanation of the masculine suffix in lsquoālacircwldquofor itover itrdquo which is not applicable to lsquoeglocirct Adopting the usual reading malkicirc rāb instead of melek yāreb (MT) Verse 8a reads like a later prosaic theological interpretation of the original lament


This passage may originally refer to the transportation of a precious item pre-sumably a divine statue to Assyriasup2⁷ It resonates well with the Nimrud Prismof Sargon II which reads ldquo[The inhabitants of Sa]maria who agreed [and plot-ted] with a king [hostile to] me not to endure servitude and not to bring tributeto Assur and who did battle I fought against them with the power of great godsmy lords I counted as spoil 27280 people together with their chariots and godsin which they trustedrdquo (lines iv 25ndash32)sup2⁸ One could easily imagine laments likethe one possibly quoted in Hos 105ndash8 to have been uttered after the fall of Sa-maria if not by prophets then perhaps by professional lamenters similarly to theones known from Assyrian recordssup2⁹

Prophecy and lament are related performances both in the Hebrew Bible andin the ancient Near Eastern sourcessup3⁰ and the literary reflection of the fate of thecity of Samaria and the Kingdom of Israel may have been inspired by source textsrepresenting both genres The Mesopotamian kalucircrsquos were not only singers butalso scribes who wrote divinatory textssup3sup1 If this was true also in Samaria(which can only be speculated) this could explain the early textualization ofsuch laments Laments like Hos 105ndash8 could have belonged to the materialcomprising the first beginnings of what we know as the Book of Hoseasup3sup2 Thelater redactors have subsequently used this material as a tool of criticism against

Cf Koumlhlmoos Bet-El 135ndash38 See C J Gadd ldquoInscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrudrdquo Iraq 16 (1954) 173ndash201esp 179ndash80 For other texts of Sargon II related to the conquest of Samaria see the chapterof Frahm in this volume However the assumed reference to Samarian lamenters in a text from Calah ndash read as 3ŠUacuteMEŠ KURSa-mir-na-a-a by Stephanie Dalley and J N Postgate The Tablets from Fort Shal-maneser (London British School of Archaeology in Iraq 1984) no 121 6 and assuming thatŠUacute was used as a logogram for kalucirc interpreted as a reference to ldquothree Samarian lamenta-tion-priestsrdquo by Kyle Lawson Younger Jr ldquoThe Deportations of the Israelitesrdquo JBL 117 (1998)221 ndash cannot be used as evidence for the existence of Samarian lamenters as the passageneeds to be read 3ndashšuacuteMEŠ KURSa-mir-na-a-a meaning ldquoThird Men (of a chariot crew) from Sa-mariardquo (pers comm Karen Radner) cf also Radnerrsquos chapter in this volume Cf Martti Nissinen ldquoBiblical Prophecy from a Near Eastern Perspective The Cases of DivineKingship and Divine Possessionrdquo in Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007 ed Andreacute Lemaire (Lei-den Brill 2010) 441ndash68 esp 458ndash61 See eg Francesca Rochberg In the Path of the Moon Babylonian Celestial Divination andIts Legacy (Studies in Ancient Magic and Divination 6 Leiden Brill 2010) 247 I am thus suggesting an earlier date to this passage than Vielhauer Das Werden des BuchesHosea 176ndash77 227ndash78 according to whom already the basic layer of Hos 101ndash8 is Deuterono-mistic This is probably true for the Kultpolemik in chapter 10 in general but not necessarily forthe source material used by the editors

378 Martti Nissinen

past andor contemporary religious practices referred to with the pejorative des-ignation designation rsquoāwen (ldquoiniquityrdquo)

(3) My third example is the possible reference to the so-called Syro-Ephrai-mite war in 734ndash732 BCE This war can be reconstructed from biblical texts only(2Kgs 165 2Chr 285ndash8 Isa 71ndash9) but if it actually took place as scholars usu-ally assume it may be interpreted as an act of hostility towards Ahaz the king ofJudah who refused to join the anti-Assyrian alliancesup3sup3 A contemporary echo of itis usually heard in Hos 58ndash 14sup3⁴ The alarm blown in three cities from south tonorth Gibeah Ramah and Beth-Awen (scil Bethel) (58) as well as the accusa-tion of the princes of Judah acting ldquolike those who remove the landmarkrdquo (510)give the impression of a Judahite attack to the area of the Kingdom of Israel andrefer to Ephraimrsquos resorting to the help of Assyria (513) Nothing of this is knownfrom other sources which rather present the Northern Kingdom as attackingJudah and this is exactly the reason why it could be interpreted as a referenceto historical events rather than as interpretation or Fortschreibung of an alreadyexisting text Hence the text could be interpreted as referring to events of theSyro-Ephraimite war unknown from other sources such as the attack of Judahon Israel and Israelrsquos turning to Assyria for help The passage is now embeddedand reworked in the context of the Book of Hosea but the old oracle could orig-inate from either Israel or Judah

Of course the passage can be interpreted otherwise Narsquoaman for exampledates the counter-attack of Judah to the time of Hoshea the last king of Israelwhen Israel was at its weakestsup3⁵ Ben Zvi on the other hand does not see a com-pelling reason to connect the passage with the historical circumstances of thelast days of the kingdom of Israel ldquoThe text as it stands does not lead to such

See eg Nadav Narsquoaman ldquoLet Other Kingdoms Struggle with the Great Powers mdash YouJudah Pay the Tribute and Hope for the Best The Foreign Policy of the Kings of Judah in theNinthndashEighth Centuries BCErdquo in Isaiahrsquos Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Re-lations Swords into Plowshares ed Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook (New York Pal-grave MacMillan 2008) 55ndash73 esp 62ndash64 Thus the majority of scholars following Albrecht Alt ldquoHosea 58ndash66 ein Krieg und seineFolgen in prophetischer Beleuchtungrdquo NKZ 30 (1919) 537ndash68 repr in id Kleine Schriften zurGeschichte des Volkes Israel vol 2 (Munich Beck 1953) 163ndash87 Even Vielhauer Das Werdendes Buches Hosea 225ndash26 finds remnants of oral proclamation from the last days of the North-ern Kingdom in verses 58ndash 11 whereas the written text in verses 58ndash 14 belongs to the late 8thcentury layer (erste Ergaumlnzungsschicht) written from the perspective of Judah Rudnig-Zelt Ho-seastudien 157ndash77 reconstructs a complicated editorial process dating the polemics against Sa-maria to its latest phases Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Sourcerdquo 239ndash40


a readingrdquo which is also unknown to ancient readerships who knew about theSyro-Ephraimite war on the basis of biblical textssup3⁶

Ben Zvi is right in stressing that the reconstructions of the historical scenerybehind passages in the Book of Hosea are based on the assumption that the textsdirectly reflect the historical prophetrsquos oral speeches and should therefore begiven a historical setting within his lifetime ldquoGiven that there are only a limitednumber of political events during that period that are known and potentially rel-evant the only question is which one would fit better a particular speechrdquosup3⁷ Thiseasily leads to a chain of circular arguments causing erroneous historical con-clusions On the other hand if one follows the principal that when writing his-tory all potential sources should be considered and nothing should be ruled outa priori even secondary sources such as prophetic books deserve to be criticallyscrutinizedsup3⁸ Therefore the possibility that a given passage in the Book of Hoseaactually provides a keyhole view into the historical landscape however narrowshould not be dismissed at the outset even though the secondary nature of theevidence should never be forgotten Individual passages of the Book of Hoseamay contain reminiscences of real historical events but they always appear re-contextualized in literary settings created by scribes who may or may not havebeen aware of the actual historical reference

Many other texts in the Book of Hosea most recently collected by Narsquoamansup3⁹could be highlighted to demonstrate the original connection of the text with thefall of Samaria and the last days of the Kingdom of Israel The problem withusing such clues as evidence of events that took place in the 730sndash720s BCEis that however nicely they seem to fit our picture of that period of timethere is always the risk of potest ergo and circular reasoning For examplethe recurrent juxtaposing of Egypt and Assyria (Hos 711 93 115 11 121) un-doubtedly makes sense with regard to the political maneuvers of Hoshea thelast king of Israelmdashprovided that they actually took place and 2Kgs 173bndash5ais not later historical speculation as suggested by Christoph Levin elsewherein this volume The problem is evidently that the parallelism of Egypt and As-syria could be used by any subsequent writer reflecting on the event For laterreaders the names can stand for Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria⁴⁰ Even Sa-

Ben Zvi Hosea 140 Ben Zvi Hosea 141 See Lester L Grabbe Ancient Israel What Do We Know and How Do We Know It (LondonTampT Clark 2007) 35ndash36 Narsquoaman ldquoThe Book of Hosea as a Sourcerdquo passim Cf Christoph Levin The Old Testament A Brief Introduction (Princeton NJ Princeton Univer-sity Press 2005) 133 with regard to Hos 78ndash 11

380 Martti Nissinen

maria was still there providing itself continually as a target for theological criti-cism for circles who considered that the wrong kind of Yahwism was practiced inthe north⁴sup1 Thereforemdashand this is generally the problem with the dating of indi-vidual passages in Hoseamdasheven if an eighth-century setting makes sense it can-not automatically be preferred

3 Evidence or Reflection of Eighth-CenturyEvents

I am convinced that the beginnings of the Book of Hosea must be sought fromthe last days of the Northern Kingdom or shortly thereafter It is virtually impos-sible to imagine the emergence of the Book of Hosea without the contemporaryexperiences of the end of the Northern Kingdom The fall of Samaria must beconsidered the decisive event that triggered the emergence of the book in what-ever way this happened over the subsequent centuries It is usually assumed thatthe redaction and transmission of the book took place in Judah not only becauseof the multiple mentions of Judah which are often ascribed to a specific redac-tion but also because of the harsh criticism of Israel Ephraim and Samariathroughout the book⁴sup2 However this criticism does not need to derive fromthe eighth century only since as Christoph Levin has argued there was enoughreason for it even later when the Samari(t)an society and worship gradually be-came an issue to the (religious) elite of Jerusalem⁴sup3 The echoes on the last daysof the Northern Kingdom in what may have constituted the earliest form of theBook of Hosea were readily available for interpretations of the subsequent gen-erations who likewise reflected their relationship with what took place in theNorthern Kingdom

It is thus problematic to quote verses of the Book of Hosea as quasi-eyewit-ness reports of events that took place in the 730sndash720s BCE even if we havegood grounds to assume that some material in the book indeed dates back tothis historical period Some passages in Hosea like the ones discussed above

As Gary N Knoppers Jews and Samaritans The Origins and History of Their Early Relations(Oxford Oxford University Press 2013) emphasizes there was no absolute breakdown of rela-tions between Yehud and Samaria in the first centuries BCE but rather a considerable culturaland religious overlap The debate on the common heritage and religious identity is evidence ofthe overlap and continuity not of the breakdown See eg Jeremias Der Prophet Hosea 18ndash 19 and passim Levin The Old Testament 129ndash33 cf the late ldquoSamariapolemikrdquo reconstructed by Rudnig-Zelt Hoseastudien 271ndash73


undeniably give the impression of contemporary experience indeed makingsense when compared to what we know about the last days of the Kingdom ofIsrael from other sources However even these passages rarely reveal historicaldata that could not even theoretically go back to later reflection Potest we cansay quite often but we should be careful with the ergo

Without suggesting anything that has not been said and done before Iwould like to argue that if any part of the Book of Hosea actually derives froma time not too distant from the last days of the kingdom of Israel (and I do be-lieve this to be the case to some extent) such passages can only be identified byway of the diachronic method and comparative analysis Individual parts of theBook of Hosea should not be dated randomly but the dating of each passageshould be based on a well-argued theory concerning the emergence growthand transmission of the text of the Book of Hosea The methodological problemis how to sort datable passages out from a text that is the product of a process oflong textual transmission and if there is a great deal of uncertainty about thisone should be cautious about making precise contemporary connections be-tween the last days of the Kingdom of Israel and the literary work we call theBook of Hosea This is why it is so difficult to detect independent historical in-formation in the Book of Hosea that could be reliably used as evidence of thelast days of the Northern Kingdom Even texts that seem to connect well with his-torical circumstances known from other sources may go back to subsequent re-flection and Fortschreibung

However the book can be used as a powerful document of the reflection andinterpretation of this historical event The event itself is real The fall of the North-ern Kingdom and its capital Samaria is something that can be historically recon-structed from the available sources It would be nonsensical to deny the connec-tion of the Book of Hosea with this event but the nature of the connection isevidently more complicated than a simple contemporary eyewitness responseThe book and the historical event are rather linked through social memorywhich creates an indirect connection between the text and the shared past mdashnot only through remembering but also by way of forgetting⁴⁴

Cf Ehud Ben Zvi ldquoRemembering Hosea The Prophet Hosea as a Site of Memory in the Per-sian Period Yehudrdquo in Poets Prophets and Texts in Play Studies in Biblical Poetry and Prophecyin Honour of Francis Landy ed Ehud Ben Zvi Claudia V Camp David M Gunn and Aaron WHughes (London T amp T Clark 2015) 37ndash57 For social memory and the collective past see alsoGeoffrey Cubitt History and Memory (Manchester Manchester University Press 2007) 199ndash249

382 Martti Nissinen

H G M Williamson

Isaiah and the Fall of the Kingdom of Israel

Isaiah of Jerusalem lived during the closing decades of the existence of theneighbouring Kingdom of Israel and for some twenty years at least thereafterAlthough he refers on a number of occasions to what Biblical scholars label ldquoTheNorthern Kingdomrdquo his references tend to be concentrated on events a decadeor so before the final fall of Samaria His allusions to the latter are generally ob-lique using the fate of Samaria as a warning of the danger in which the southernJudah and Jerusalem stand if they continue with their present policies and life-style

In terms of political history with which this volume is chiefly concerned it istherefore clear that our harvest from Isaiah will be meagre In addition to thathowever I shall in this paper try also to outline some of the ideological implica-tions that follow from the fall of Samaria In terms of the history of religion andthe language that gives expression to it we may find that Isaiah both as histor-ical prophet and as book has much to contribute

It should come as no surprise if I stress finally by way of introduction that byalmost universal consent only a modest amount of what is found in the book ofIsaiah actually derives straight from the eighth century From chapter 40 on-wards despite many references to Jacob and Israel all the material was writtenin the sixth and later centuries of course Equally all agree that a good deal inchapters 1ndash39 also comes from the time after Isaiah himself but exactly what ismore controversial In a historical study such as the present one that is obvious-ly a matter for concern and I shall have space to make only a few remarks tojustify the positions I adopt What it is important to bear in mind however isthat while I am undertaking a severely diachronic analysis that does not meanthat we should simply discard the later material Rather we should value it high-ly as first-hand evidence of the later reception of material that may have appliedoriginally to Israel and Samaria That reception from earliest days on is impor-tant evidence of the great impact on the development of subsequent thought thatIsaiah had

I want to begin with terminology and specifically with the ways in whichIsaiah labelled the Northern Kingdom The so-called refrain poem in 97ndash20makes for a good starting point In chapter 9 we have three stanzas each closedby an almost identical refrain in verses 11 16 and 20 The same form of wordingrecurs in 525with the following verses 526ndash29 apparently comprising the final

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-019

stanza of the poemsup1 This final stanza tells of the advance of an unnamed butinvincible enemy who we may presume is Godrsquos final agent of judgment forthe various sins enumerated in the preceding stanzas It is likely that the occur-rence of the refrain in 525 marks the end therefore of the original fourth stanzaonly two lines of which have been preserved in 525a I refer to my discussionselsewhere to explain how and why this dislocation may have taken placesup2

Once a few obvious minor later expansions (such as 914) have been paren-thesised the four complete stanzas which now remain are of remarkably similarlength and poetic shape though we should probably not use this to force theminto exact conformity with each other as Gray was tempted to dosup3 This raises aninteresting point with regard to the first stanza in verses 7ndash 11 MT has six and ahalf lines which certainly seems unlikely There has probably been some severedamage to the text of verse 8 as I argue at length in the textual notes to my forth-coming commentary so that the length of the present text of the stanza shouldnot deflect us from construing verse 7 as an independent heading to the wholepoem That it is so is demanded by the observation that this is the only stanzawhich has a generalised introduction ldquoThe Lord has sent a word againstJacob and it will fall upon Israelrdquo In addition the titles of those addressedare immediately changed in verse 8 where the specific indictment beginsldquoBut all the people did evil Ephraim and the residents of Samariardquo Verse 8therefore clearly refers to the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom and thatwill then account also for the use of the name Israel in v 11 following

In verse 7 however which on this view introduces the whole of the poemwefind that those addressed are ldquoJacob and hellip Israelrdquo Although most of the rest ofthe poem is most easily construed with reference to the Northern Kingdom (the

The tenses used support this view since they are generally indicative of the past in 97ndash20 butthey shift to a future orientation in 526ndash29 (predominantly either imperfect or waw + perfect) See Hugh G MWilliamson A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1ndash27 vol 1 Isaiah1ndash5 (London TampT Clark 2006) 400ndash403 together with the relevant passage in the forthcomingvolume 2 see also id ldquoCommenting on the Unknown Reflections on Isaiah 97ndash20rdquo in TheGenre of Biblical Commentary Essays in Honor of John E Hartley on the Occasion of his 75th Birth-day ed Timothy D Finlay and William Yarchin (Eugene OR Pickwick 2015) 184ndash95 Againstthe inclusion of 101ndash4 in this poem despite the recurrence of the refrain at 104b see HughG M Williamson ldquolsquoAn Initial Problemrsquo The Setting and Purpose of Isaiah 101ndash4rdquo in TheBook of Isaiah Enduring Questions Answered Anew Essays Honoring Joseph Blenkinsopp andHis Contribution to the Study of Isaiah ed Richard J Bautch and J Todd Hibbard (Grand RapidsMI Eerdmans 2014) 11ndash20 G Buchanan Gray A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Isaiah I-XXVII (Edin-burgh TampT Clark 1912) 177 see too more recently Herbert Donner Israel unter den Voumllkern (Lei-den Brill 1964) 66ndash69


reference to Ephraim and Manasseh in verse 20 is only the most obvious indica-tion of this) Judah is also included (again see verse 20 for a direct mention⁴) Itis therefore probable that the names in verse 7 are not synonymous with those inverse 8 as many commentators have assumed⁵ but rather that Israel and Jacobare used to cover a wider audience including both kingdoms

Because as we shall see later this is a matter of considerable historical im-portance it will be worthwhile to see if this kind of distinction in terminology isa consistent feature of Isaiahrsquos own sayings or whether our poem is an exceptionto some other rule

A superficial survey indicates that elsewhere too Isaiah referred to the North-ern Kingdom in comparable terms In 81ndash4 which is part of Isaiahrsquos own first-person commentary on the so-called Syro-Ephraimite crisis of 734ndash732 BCE thecoalition partners are referred to as Samaria and Damascus (v 4) and the threatagainst them is again explicitly Assyria

Similarly there is a longer account of this same crisis in chapter 7 This istold in the third person and cannot derive directly from Isaiah but reaches usas with the comparable narratives in chapters 20 and 36ndash39 from some sepa-rate Deuteronomistically-inspired narrator He had access to reasonable histor-ical memory however as the other passages just mentioned clearly indicate sothat we need not doubt that he incorporated a fair substance of Isaiahrsquos ownwords Here in the introduction in verse 1 which has a close parallel in 2Kgs165 Pekah is identified as king of Israel This is standard terminology in the his-

Ronald E Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans and London Marshall Morganamp Scott 1980) 69 proposes that this clause should be regarded as ldquoa redactorrsquos addition whohas sought to bring out more forcefully that the final defeat of the Northern Kingdom arose be-cause the people there refused to reunite with Judah and accept the Davidic monarchyrdquo In hisview the original prophecy concerned only the Northern Kingdom in its final decade In view ofthe familiarity with this kind of Judean gloss in Hosea it is perhaps surprising that this sug-gestion has not been more widely adopted The reason is presumably that it is not so certainas Clements maintains that the poem originally referred exclusively to the Northern Kingdomand also that as a Judean author Isaiah would himself no doubt have had an interest in theeffect of his observations on his own nation In my opinion the first colon of the versewould on its own have been a curiously weak poetic ending to the stanza The poetic shapeof the passage certainly favours retaining the phrase here See for instance Karl Marti Das Buch Jesaja (Tuumlbingen Mohr Siebeck 1900) 96 John Skin-ner The Book of the Prophet Isaiah Chapters i-xxxix (Cambridge Cambridge University Press1897) 78 Gray Isaiah 1ndashXXVII 183 Jesper Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaja eine Untersu-chung zur biblischen Theologie (Leiden Brill 1988) 8 J J M Roberts First Isaiah A Commentary(Minneapolis MI Fortress 2015) 160 more cautiously Hans Wildberger Jesaja 1ndash 12 (Neukirch-en-Vluyn Neukirchener Verlag 1980 2nd edition) 214 = id Isaiah 1ndash 12 a Commentary transThomas H Trapp (Minneapolis MI Fortress 1991) 230


torical books and we need not doubt that the wording derives from that samecircle It will not directly reflect Isaiahrsquos own preferred terminology When weget into the narrative proper immediately following however we find that theNorthern Kingdom is referred to rather as Ephraim (vv 2 5 9 17) with Samariaas its ldquoheadrdquo (v 9) This therefore exactly parallels the use in 97

The same terminology appears in 1113 ldquoThen the jealousy towards Ephraimwill depart and those who are hostile to Judah will be cut off Ephraim will notenvy Judah and Judah will not show hostility towards Ephraimrdquo This verse ap-pears in a passage whose introduction and conclusion in verses 11ndash 12 and 15ndash16show conclusively that it cannot be earlier than the exilic period Indeed thelinks between these verses and parts of chapters 40ndash55 are striking There arereasons to question the original internal unity of this passage however⁶ Firstverse 11 (with which 12 is joined by content) and verses 15ndash16 are more prosaicthan the verses which they enclose This kind of distinction is admittedly not asclear cut as we might wish in the modern world and there are undoubtedly gra-dations of style in classical Hebrew where the boundaries between poetry andprose are blurred I do not however take the extreme view that claims that itis a mistake to use the term poetry at all Whatever labels we use howeverthe use of prose particles lack of parallelism the use of a long list of placenames and uneven line length combine to indicate that there is a differenceof style between the two sections I have mentioned and the remainder of the pas-sage

Second the first and last parts of the passage are closely associated themati-cally with each other They concentrate on the regathering of those in the dia-spora and as already mentioned they come very close to some of the themesand forms of expression that we find in Isaiah 40ndash55 The middle section bycontrast speaks of the reunion of the sharply opposed factions within theland and of their military triumphs over the traditional enemies of Israel andJudah (a theme incidentally in which Isaiah 40ndash55 shows no interest whatso-ever)While it is possible imaginatively to join these two very different topics thepassage itself does not furnish any such join⁷ and the fact that it returns at theend to the theme with which it began tends to highlight the difference

The following discussion represents a revision of the position that I argued in Hugh G MWil-liamson The Book Called Isaiah Deutero-Isaiahrsquos Role in Composition and Redaction (OxfordClarendon 1994) 125ndash41 where I treated the passage as a unity including verses 13ndash 14I now agree with those who have been critical of the way I handled those two verses For fullerdetails on the points summarised here see my forthcoming commentary on Isaiah 6ndash 12 Cf Bernhard Duhm Das Buch Jesaia (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1892 4th edition1922) 109 ldquo13 und 14 schieben sich ungeschickt zwischen v 11 f und v 15 f einrdquo


The most plausible trigger for verses 13ndash 14 is the refrain poem in chapter 9There too we read of enmity between Ephraim and Judah (920) and there toothe ldquoPhilistines in the westrdquo and ldquoAram in the eastrdquo are depicted as the arche-typical enemies of Israel (911) Our two verses seem to represent an idealised re-versal of the bad situation which was depicted in that poem It may therefore besuggested that these two verses were developed independently as some sort ofresponsive expansion of that longer poem and that this was later picked upby the author of our passage Whether by Isaiah or a later close imitator theuse of the name Ephraim again fits the pattern we have been tracing

With chapter 17 we get back on to slightly firmer ground This is one of thelong selections of ldquoOracles Against the Nationsrdquo in chapters 13ndash23 and againthere are differences of opinion as to which may be from Isaiah himself andequally which parts of even early oracles may have been added later Chapter 17is an oracle concerning Damascus and it seems to predict her downfall Giventhat this is known to have happened in 732 BCE many commentators favourthe view that the chapter at least contains some very early material Thiswhole debate has recently been well summarised by Paul M Cook and in myopinion he then advances a very convincing argument based on the differentways in which the otherwise similar titles to each oracle are used for isolatingfour of them as being among the material assembled at the earliest stage in thedevelopment of the book These are the oracles about Philistia (1428ndash32) Moab(chapters 15ndash 16) Damascus (chapter 17) and Egypt (chapter 19)⁸ While ourchapter 17 has undoubtedly gone through some stages of later expansion verses1b and the first part of 3 at least seem to belong together as part of the primarylayer as agreed by even the most radical of modern analyses and here too wefind that the Northern Kingdom (with whom of course Damascus was in alli-ance at the point where her history impinged especially on Judah) is referredto initially as Ephraim (this was later expanded to ldquothe children of Israelrdquo)⁹

Paul M Cook A Sign and a Wonder the Redactional Formation of Isaiah 18ndash20 (Leiden Brill2011) 1ndash47 For this minimal analysis see eg Scholastika Deck Die Gerichtsbotschaft Jesajas Charakterund Begruumlndung (Wuumlrzburg Echter Verlag 1991) 53ndash55 78ndash79 Uwe Becker Jesaja ndash von derBotschaft zum Buch (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1997) 274ndash75 Matthijs de JongIsaiah among the Ancient Near Eastern Prophets A Comparative Study of the Earliest Stages ofthe Isaiah Tradition and the Neo-Assyrian Prophecies (Leiden Brill 2007) 146ndash47 is similarthough he also retains part of verse 2 see too Heide-Marie Pfaff Die Entwicklung des Restgedank-ens in Jesaja 1ndash39 (Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang 1996) 85ndash88 For a more generous thoughstill critical analysis of the whole chapter see Donner Israel unter den Voumllkern 38ndash42 MichaelE W Thompson Situation and Theology Old Testament Interpretations of the Syro-EphraimiteWar (Sheffield Almond 1982) 42ndash45 Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaia 106ndash7


The relationship of verses 4ndash6 with verses 1ndash3 is less clear On the onehand the introductory ldquoAnd it shall come to pass on that dayrdquo is very oftenused elsewhere to indicate a subsequent addition or expansion On the otherhand there is little in the verses themselves to point to a substantially laterdate It seems to announce the future downfall of ldquothe glory of Jacobrdquo Wehave not met this designation previously though we shall need to look later attwo or three other occurrences of it we shall find that it can certainly be used(against what we might at first suppose) for the Southern Kingdom of JudahIn the context following verses 1ndash3 however it is difficult not to suppose thatit refers here to the Northern Kingdom Ephraim though why there should bea change of name here is not agreed Is it possible that we have two originallyseparate poetic units in verses 1ndash3 and 4ndash6 which have here been combined(we may note the use of the catchword ldquogloryrdquo in verses 3 and 4) If so the pos-sibility presents itself that verses 4ndash6 have in view not the fate of Israel in theaftermath of the Syro-Ephraimite crisis but rather the later eventual fall to theAssyrians in 720 (or whenever precisely it was)sup1⁰ If so it would furnish one ofonly very few direct references to that particular event

A final passage that demands our attention in this section of our study is281ndash4 on which I still adhere to the view that I argued already more than twen-ty years agosup1sup1 Although it is generally agreed to start a significant new section inthe book it is striking that it has no heading in contrast with 11 21 and 131 aswell as the different form of heading in 61 and 1428 In addition it is curious tofind a woe-saying directed towards the Northern Kingdom opening a series ofwoe sayings in the following chapters which seem most naturally to be relatedto the situation in Judah just before 701 BCE twenty years or so after the fallof Samaria It is therefore perhaps helpful to recall that we only consider thatit starts a new section in the book because it follows chapters 24ndash27 whichstand out as a distinct section of their ownWhile the conclusion is thus entirelyjustified so far as the present shape of the book is concerned the situation looksvery different when we recall that 24ndash27 was certainly added quite late inthe composition history of the book Before that 281ndash4 will have followedstraight after the other oracles against the nations and in fact there is no reasonwhy we should not simply assume that it was originally one of those introduced

For the possibility that some of the material in the following verses also refers to the North-ern Kingdom see Willem A M Beuken ldquoFrom Damascus to Mount Zion a Journey Through theLand of the Harvester (Isaiah 17ndash 18)rdquo in lsquoEnlarge the Site of Your Tentrsquo the City as UnifyingTheme in Isaiah ed Archibald L H M van Wieringen and Annemarieke van der Woude (LeidenBrill 2011) 63ndash80 See Williamson The Book Called Isaiah 184ndash88 where the case is set out in fuller detail


by ldquowoerdquo just like 181 Rather like Amos 1ndash2 in reverse a series of oraclesagainst various nations led originally to Judahrsquos nearest neighbour and wasthen turned to Judah herself with a series of woe and massarsquo oracles in the re-mainder of 28ndash31 Without going into further detail here it suffices to notethat the Northern Kingdom is again called Ephraim (vv 1 and 3)

Moving slightly further afield we find comparably that in the early poem in105ndash9 13ndash 15sup1sup2 Assyria is addressed directly but the reference is to her dealingswith ldquoa godless nationrdquo (v 6)While some have argued that this refers to Judahsup1sup3or to both kingdoms togethersup1⁴ I strongly agree with the majority view that thereference is exclusively to the Northern Kingdomsup1⁵ for the following reasons(i) in verse 6 the ldquogodless nationrdquo echoes the language of 916 while the furtherdescription of them as people ldquowho arouse my furyrdquo uses a word for fury whichdoes not derive from the previous verse (anger and rage) but rather from 918 aswe have already seen the people in view in 916 and 18 are Ephraim and Sama-ria (ii) The reference to taking spoil and plunder (also in v 6) recalls the name ofthe child Maher-shalal-hash-baz in 81ndash4 and in the explanation in v 4 theldquospoilrdquo is linked directly with Samaria (iii) The continuation of verse 6 by statingthat they will be made into ldquosomething that is trampled down like mud in thestreetsrdquo clearly recalls 283 where we are told that ldquothe crown of the drunkardsof Ephraim will be trampled under footrdquo Thus all four clauses in verse 6 haveclose parallels elsewhere in the early material in Isaiah that refers explicitly toEphraim Israel or Samaria (iv) finally the sequence of cities conquered by

In my opinion which again is shared by many others verses 10ndash 11 and verse 12 representlater additions in which the lessons of the Northern Kingdom are reapplied to the Southern Igive reasons for this conclusion together with fuller bibliography in ldquoIdols in Isaiah in theLight of Isaiah 1010ndash11rdquo in New Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy and History Essaysin Honour of Hans M Barstad ed Rannfrid I Thelle Terje Stordalen and Mervyn E J Richardson(Leiden Brill 2015) 17ndash28 Eg Marti Das Buch Jesaja 105 Johann Fischer Das Buch Isaias uumlbersetzt und erklaumlrtKapitel 1ndash39 (Bonn Hanstein 1937) 94 Eg August Dillmann Der Prophet Jesaia (Leipzig Hirzel 1890 5th edition) 105 Edward JYoung The Book of Isaiah The English Text with Introduction Exposition and Notes (Grand Rap-ids MI Eerdmans 1965) 360 Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 110ndash 11 Eg Wilhelm Gesenius Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Commentar uumlber den Jesaia(Leipzig Vogel 1821) 391 Ferdinand Hitzig Der Prophet Jesaja (Heidelberg Winter 1833) 126Otto Procksch Jesaia I (Leipzig Deichert 1930) 164 Josef Schreiner Sion-Jerusalem Jahwehs Kouml-nigssitz Theologie der Heiligen Stadt im Alten Testament (Munich Koumlsel 1963) 264 de JongIsaiah among the Ancient Near Eastern Prophets 128 Arie van der Kooij ldquolsquoNimrod a MightyHunter before the Lordrsquo Assyrian Royal Ideology as Perceived in the Hebrew Biblerdquo Journalfor Semitics 21 (2012) 15 Konrad Schmid ldquoDie Anfaumlnge des Jesajabuchsrdquo in Congress VolumeMunich 2013 ed Christl M Maier (Leiden Brill 2014) 435


the Assyrian as listed in verse 9 reaches its climax with Samaria Now it maywell be that rather as in the case of the sequence in 78ndash9a the reader ismeant tacitly to conclude from this that the same could apply by extension toJerusalem but that is not the same thing as saying that Jerusalem is directlymentioned here The whole structure of the passage leads up to and shouldtherefore be referred to Samaria Since Damascus is referred to as a citywhich Assyria has already conquered (see v 9) we must assume that this pas-sage is later than 732 BCE when the northern part of Israel was also annexedand that it has in view the final fall of Samaria to the Assyrians a decade orso latersup1⁶ The use of the name Samaria is thus entirely appropriate here andagain we should note that the name Israel is not used in this connection

A more precise date is difficult to determine In my view the reference to the defeat of Carch-emish in verse 9 means that it cannot be earlier than 717 BCE see J David Hawkins ldquoKarkamišrdquoin RlA 5 ed Dietz Otto Edzard (1980) 441 445 Karen Radner ldquoProvinz C Assyrienrdquo in RlA 11ed Michael P Streck (2008) 58 Some have thought that the failure to list Ashdod which wassubjugated by the Assyrians in 711 BCE indicates a date earlier than that hence quite narrowlybetween 717 and 711 BCE eg Procksch Jesaia 166 Schreiner Sion-Jerusalem 265 Walter Die-trich Jesaja und die Politik (Munich Kaiser 1976) 118 Hermann Barth Die Jesaja-Worte in derJosiazeit Israel und Assur als Thema einer produktiven Neuinterpretation der Jesajauumlberlieferung(Neukirchen-Vluyn Neukirchener Verlag 1977) 26 Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaja 118Francolino J Gonccedilalves LrsquoExpeacutedition de Sennacheacuterib en Palestine dans la litteacuterature heacutebraiumlqueancienne (Paris Gabalda 1986) 260 but this particular argument is weak There is no sugges-tion that every city conquered by Assyria should be included and Ashdod would not have suitedthe north-south arrangement of the list so well given that it is south of Samaria see correctlyErich Bosshard-Nepustil Rezeptionen von Jesaia 1ndash39 im Zwoumllfprophetenbuch Untersuchungenzur literarischen Verbindung von Prophetenbuumlchern in babylonischer und persischer Zeit (FreiburgUniversitaumltsverlag and Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1997) 240ndash41 n 6 Others there-fore have claimed that the passage should best be set immediately prior to the Assyrian inva-sion in 701 BCE in the course of Hezekiahrsquos revolt eg Duhm Jesaia 97 Skinner Isaiah 83ndash84Marti Jesaja 105 Edward J Kissane The Book of Isaiah Translated from a Critically Revised He-brew Text with Commentary 1 indashxxxix (Dublin Browne and Nolan 1941) 123 Paul Auvray Isaiumle1ndash39 (Paris Gabalda 1972) 135 William R Gallagher Sennacheribrsquos Campaign to Judah NewStudies (Leiden Brill 1999) 85ndash86 Joseph Blenkinsopp Isaiah 1ndash39 a New Translation withIntroduction and Commentary (New York Doubleday 2000) 254 Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 110not unreasonably rejects this latter opinion on the ground that ldquoIsaiah condemned the allianceon which Hezekiahrsquos revolt was based and foretold its disastrous outcomerdquo It may be noted inaddition that this date is often supported by the reference to Jerusalem in verse 11 but if thatverse is secondary as most rightly believe then that part of the argument loses its forceWhile there can be no final certainty therefore (so Gray Isaiah IndashXXVII 196 Wildberger Jesaja1ndash 12 393ndash94 [= Isaiah 1ndash 12 415] Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 110 Deck Die Gerichtsbotschaft Jesa-jas 39) the earlier date possibly in connection with the Ashdod rebellionwhich began in 713 isto be preferred


I mentioned that at 174 we find the expression ldquothe glory of Jacobrdquo in rela-tion to the Northern Kingdom and that some scholars attribute this to Isaiah him-self It follows that we should also survey other uses of Jacob in chapters 1ndash39sup1⁷The name appears as part of the divine titles ldquothe God of Jacobrdquo in 23 and ldquotheHoly One of Jacobrdquo in 2923 in the expression ldquohouse of Jacobrdquo in 25 6 8171020 141 (second occurrence of the name in that verse) 2922 (first occurrence)and in a more free-standing manner in 97 1021 141 (first occurrence) 174 2769 2922 (second occurrence) Of these the majority should certainly be datedwell after the time of Isaiah himself In most cases this would not be in seriousdispute though a few are less certain In my opinion a serious case for Isaianicauthorship can be maintained in relation only to 26 817 97 and 176sup1⁸

Isaiah 26 introduces the famous poem against human hubris with the wordsldquoYou have abandoned your people the house of Jacobrdquo Even among those who(like myself) are sympathetic to the largely Isaianic origin of this verse there aresome who hold on quite strong grounds that our particular phrase was addedonly redactionally well after Isaiahrsquos timesup1⁹ In that case it would not be relevantfor our present inquiry

Taking it as original for the sake of argument it has occasionally beenthought that the reference here is exclusively to the Northern Kingdomsup2⁰ This de-pends in part on construing the phrase ldquohouse of Jacobrdquo as a vocative and in parton the suggestion that in authentically Isaianic sayings Jacob always refers to theNorthern Kingdom Neither supposition is beyond challenge however So far asthe syntax of the verse is concerned the versions are divided and so cannot set-tle the matter either way More tellingly the construal as vocative results in anawkward shift from second person address here to third person in the immedi-

See also Wolfgang Werner Eschatologische Texte in Jesaja 1ndash39 Messias Heiliger RestVoumllker (Wuumlrzburg Echter 1982) 112ndash 14 Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaja 16ndash17 forusage in the second half of the book see Hugh G M Williamson ldquoJacob in Isaiah 40ndash66rdquoin Continuity and Discontinuity Chronological and Thematic Development in Isaiah 40ndash66 edLena-Sofia Tiemeyer and Hans M Barstad (Goumlttingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 2014)219ndash29 Some of the passages in the first half such as 141 come very close to what we findin the distinctive terminology of chapters 40ndash48 in particular For 21ndash4 as exilic see Williamson Isaiah 1ndash5 173ndash78 25 is a redactional join between 2ndash4and 6ndash 19 the name Jacob being one of the important connecting elements See for instance Marvin A Sweeney Isaiah 1ndash39 with an Introduction to Prophetic Literature(Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1996) 102 See especially J J M Roberts ldquoIsaiah 2 and the Prophetrsquos Message to the Northrdquo JQR 75(1984ndash85) 290ndash308 and Roberts First Isaiah 44


ately following linessup2sup1 and in addition as Gesenius observed long ago outsideof purely secular contexts the verb שטנ is usually used with God as subjectsup2sup2 Onthe second argument the evidence that in Isaiah Jacob only ever refers to theNorthern Kingdom seems to me quite unjustified 817 to which I shall turnnext seems categorically to rule out this proposal and in the present chapter(which in this argument is taken as a whole) verse 3 seems equally clear Aswe shall see later the God of Jacob seems to be peculiarly associated with theJerusalem temple so that it is difficult to envisage that Judah would not atleast be included in a reference such as the present one The choice of titlewas probably determined by religio-historical rather than crudely political con-siderations If authentic its reference in 26 will therefore coincide with 817 towhich I now turn

This verse comes right at the end of the first-person material included inchapters 6 and 8 While I agree that verse 18 immediately following should beattributed to a later redactor there is no good reason to include verse 17 withthis as has occasionally been suggestedsup2sup3 In particular it is difficult to supposethat verses 16ndash 17 do not predate 308 It would be very odd to have a much laterwriter indicating that Isaiah would still see Godrsquos deliverance within his own life-time such a ldquomistakerdquo is more readily intelligible as a reflection of Isaiahrsquos ownthinking early on in his ministry

This is the only place in this block of first-person material where (the houseof) Jacob is mentioned at all Just before in verse 14 we find the unique expres-sion ldquothe two houses of Israelrdquo which I will discuss more fully below I suggestthat in the present instance the referent is the same (ie a name that was inclu-sive of those in both kingdoms) It is suitable at this concluding point of the pas-sage which began with the temple vision that we should revert to a peculiarlycult-based title to indicate the temporary withdrawal of Godrsquos protecting favourto his people (broadly conceived) In fact fuller study could show that all threemain elements in the verse (the verbs to describe Isaiahrsquos action the clause todescribe Godrsquos action and the phrase which identifies the people affected) are

See Marvin A Sweeney Isaiah 1ndash4 and the Post-Exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition(Berlin de Gruyter 1988) 139ndash40 including a helpfully full survey of the versional evidence Gesenius Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Commentar uumlber den Jesaia 182 For both points see my arguments in Hugh G MWilliamson ldquoA Sign and a Portent in Isaiah818rdquo in Studies in the Text and Versions of the Hebrew Bible in Honour of Robert Gordon edGeoffrey Khan and Diana Lipton (Leiden Brill 2012) 77ndash86 and idrdquoIsaiah Prophet of Wealor Woerdquo in ldquoThus Speaks Ishtar of Arbelardquo Prophecy in Israel Assyria and Egypt in the Neo-As-syrian Period ed Robert P Gordon and Hans M Bartsad (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2013)287ndash91


all drawn from a similar cultic milieu Judah must certainly at least be includedtherefore in Isaiahrsquos understanding of the house of Jacob

This conclusion fits perfectly with what I have already written with regardto 97 where Jacob is also used in an inclusive sense In sum 817 and 97 go to-gether If the occurrence in 26 is original (which is uncertain) it too could fit thesame picture though a reference there to Judah alone seems contextually moreprobable This leaves only 174 as a possible reference to the Northern Kingdomalone though it is equally disputed whether this verse should be ascribed toIsaiah

I conclude this survey of nomenclature relating to the Northern Kingdomtherefore by stating that Isaiah generally referred to it as Ephraim occasionallySamaria and perhaps once Jacob He uses the name Israel in relation to it onlywhen that is firmly subsumed from a literary perspective to the dominant Eph-raim title never so far as we have seen in isolation These findings thereforeraise in an acute form the question why Isaiah avoided almost completely theuse of the name Israel in the way that we might have regarded as standard forthe Northern Kingdomsup2⁴

An important clue comes in the first-person material in chapter 8 We havealready noted the use of Samaria in verses 1ndash4 and this is followed in verses5ndash8a with an indictment against ldquothis peoplerdquo whom I take to be Judahsup2⁵While it is clear that the sayings in 1ndash4 and 5ndash8 have been joined redactionallythat does not entail as a necessary consequence that this could only have hap-pened very late For a host of reasons relating to literary inter-connections andtheological consistency which cannot all be itemised here the literary integrity

To my embarrassment I was not aware until her participation in the conference that under-lies this volume of the important and detailed monograph of Kristin Weingart Staumlmmevolk ndashStaatsvolk ndash Gottesvolk Studien zur Verwendung des Israel-Namens im Alten Testament (Tuumlbin-gen Mohr Siebeck 2014)While inevitably there are points of difference between us (eg on theinterpretation of Isa 57) we seem to be running along parallel lines in regard to some of themajor issues which I now go on to address (see especially her pp 190ndash227 342ndash44 and360ndash64 though other parts of the book are also relevant) Rather than completely rework myoriginal draft in the light of her research I have therefore decided to keep this part of thetext more or less as first written in order that readers can distinguish more clearly how wehave worked independently to reach our broadly compatible conclusions as well as to comparethem and decide which they prefer on matters of detail I have discussed this in advance of my forthcoming commentary in Hugh G MWilliamsonldquoThe Waters of Shiloah (Isaiah 85ndash8)rdquo in The Fire Signals of Lachish Studies in the Archaeologyand History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age Iron Age and Persian Period in Honor of David Us-sishkin ed Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Narsquoaman (Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns 2011) 331ndash43


of 61ndash 11+81ndash8a 11ndash 17 seems to me too strong to denysup2⁶ It is therefore no co-incidence that after these sayings against Samaria and Judah the two aredrawn together in the following passage with a reference to the downfall ofldquothe two houses of Israelrdquo From Isaiahrsquos own pen therefore we have hereclear evidence that he considered Israel to be a name which embraced both Eph-raimSamaria and JudahJerusalem In other words in terms of political realitieson the ground he favoured using ancient tribal designations together with refer-ence to the capital cities whereas he preferred to reserve the name Israel forsome sort of overarching unity between the twosup2⁷

Because of uncertainties about the dating of oracles within Isaiahrsquos own life-time it is difficult to be certain whether there are other passages which supportthis view from the years prior to the fall of Samariasup2⁸ The strongest candidate isin the Song of the Vineyard in 51ndash7 While the date of this passage cannot becertainly established I have argued elsewhere that for several reasons it fitsmost naturally into the first part of Isaiahrsquos ministrysup2⁹ In the concluding versewe read that ldquothe vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel and thepeople of Judah are the planting in which he took delightrdquo There are three pos-sible ways of understanding the relationship between these two names they

For full argumentation see my forthcoming commentary Some of the arguments are present-ed in a preliminary way in Williamson ldquoIsaiah Prophet of Weal or Woerdquo For a different approach to this expression see the important study by Reinhard G KratzldquoThe Two Houses of Israelrdquo in Let Us Go up to Zion Essays in Honour of HGM Williamsonon the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday ed Iain Provan and Mark J Boda (Leiden Brill2012) 167ndash79 He rightly makes the point that in this context ldquohouserdquo has to be understood po-litically rather than just culturally or religiously (in contrast for instancewith ldquohouse of Jacobrdquo)Encouraged by the reception of the passage in CD he ties the present passage diachronicallyhowever with 717 and so finds the use of Israel to be much later than Isaiah being part ofthe ldquoall-Israelrdquo perspective which he finds developing in the later Isaiah tradition As I shallelaborate a little later in this essay I find it possible to believe that Isaiah held together asense of the two contemporary kingdoms with an inherited appreciation of their greater unitySo far as 717 is concerned I agree that 71ndash17 can only have been written and later incorporatedin the book well after Isaiahrsquos lifetime At the same time it may well include a sound memory ofsome of Isaiahrsquos own words (allowances of course have to be made for alteration over time) Tothe extent that 717 comes into this category I agree that it may well reflect his understandingthat this greater unity derived from a period which we now call the United Monarchy Whetherhe was historically correct in this (as many still think) or not (as others hold) is not somethingwhich need affect the exegesis of his sayings 13 for example seems to refer to the people as a whole under the name Israel but in myview and that of many others this was not written as early as the time when the Northern King-dom still existed see Williamson Isaiah 1ndash5 28ndash30 See Williamson Isaiah 1ndash5 330ndash31


could be synonymous they could be completely distinct (referring to the north-ern and southern kingdoms respectively) or it could be a case where the firstname is further specified by the second Although the second possibility hasbeen quite popularsup3⁰ it seems the least likely here The vineyard and the ldquoplant-ing in which he took delightrdquo are clearly not two wholly separate elements but atthe least overlap in some measure and it would be very strange if Judah were notalso included within the referent of the vineyard Similarly to make the twoterms completely synonymous as in the first possibilitysup3sup1 also seems unlikelyIf this passage dates from early in the prophetrsquos ministry when the NorthernKingdom still existed such usage would at the least be confusing The third pos-sibility by contrast has much to commend itsup3sup2 It fits best the form of parallelismhere (nearer definition) and it fits exactly with Isaiahrsquos use of Israel alreadynoted namely the people of God as a whole

More promising in this regard is I believe the divine title ldquothe Holy One ofIsraelrdquo While this title comes twelve times in Isaiah 1ndash39 not all occurrences byany means can be ascribed to Isaiah himself Indeed in a study of this title in thebook as a whole I have argued elsewhere that probably only 519 3011 12 25311 go back to Isaiah himself and these probably all come from the period lead-ing immediately up to 701 BCEsup3sup3 There is no evidence that Isaiah himself coinedthis expression and indeed if he had we should have expected to find it in theaccount of his vision in chapter 6 with its related cry in the Trisagion Rather it

Eg Clements Isaiah 1ndash39 59ndash60 Gale E Yee ldquoA Form-Critical Study of Isaiah 51ndash7 as aSong and a Juridical Parablerdquo CBQ 43 (1981) 37ndash38 Renatus Porath Die Sozialkritik im Jesaja-buch Redaktionsgeschichtliche Analyse (Frankfurt Peter Lang 1994) 183ndash84 Klaus SeyboldldquoDas Weinberglied des Propheten Jesaja (51ndash7)rdquo in id Die Sprache der Propheten Studienzur Literaturgeschichte der Prophetie (Zuumlrich Pano 1999) 117 So Wildberger Jesaja 1ndash 12 171ndash72 (= Isaiah 1ndash 12 184ndash85)Willy Schottroff ldquoDas Weinberg-lied Jesajas (Jes 5 1-7) Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Parabelrdquo ZAW 82 (1970) 89 Kirsten NielsenThere Is Hope for a Tree The Tree as Metaphor in Isaiah (Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press1989) 108ndash 14 (though she allows that it may have been reapplied to the Northern Kingdomin a later reinterpretation) Cf Anders J Bjoslashrndalen Untersuchungen zur allegorischen Rede der Propheten Amos und Je-saja (Berlin de Gruyter 1986) 316ndash18 who lists many earlier commentators who adopted thisview add now Lukas M Muntingh ldquoThe Name lsquoIsraelrsquo and Related Terms in the Book of Isaiahrdquoin Studies in Isaiah OTWSA 22 1979 and OTWSA 23 1980 edWouter C van Wyk (Pretoria So-ciety for the Study of the Old Testament 1982) 159ndash82 Hubert Irsigler ldquoSpeech Acts and Inten-tion in the lsquoSong of the Vineyardrsquo Isaiah 51ndash7rdquo OTE 10 (1997) 64 Willem A M Beuken Jesaja1ndash 12 (Freiburg Herder 2003) 138 See Hugh G MWilliamson ldquoIsaiah and the Holy One of Israelrdquo in Biblical Hebrew BiblicalTexts Essays in Memory of Michael P Weitzman ed Ada Rapoport-Albert and Gillian Greenberg(Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press 2001) 22ndash38


is my belief that its occurrence three times in the Psalter (Pss 7122 7841 8919)indicates that it may have been an infrequently used title in the liturgy whetheror not these three Psalms pre-date Isaiah (and many would argue that they donot) it is more probable that they reflect ancient liturgical use (which of courseis notoriously conservative) than that they have picked the title up from Isaiah orthe later Isaiah traditionsup3⁴

I should make a similar case for ldquothe God of Jacobrdquo which astonishinglycomes in the Zion Psalm 468 12 as well as in a number of other psalms201 246 (by a probable emendation) 7510 767 812 5 849 947 1465(again without regard to the question whether these particular psalms areearly though a strong case can be made for that in some instances)sup3⁵ and like-wise the even commoner title ldquothe God of Israelrdquo (some 200 occurrences inall though in only three instances can any sort of case be made for use by Isaiahhimself sup3⁶) along with the rare ldquoStrong One of Israelrdquo (Isa 124 almost certainlyIsaianic) which sits alongside the commoner ldquoStrong One of Jacobrdquo elsewhere(Gen 4924 Isa 4926 6016 Ps 1322 5)sup3⁷ All this needs to be contrasted withthe fact that we never find even once any such title as ldquothe God of Judahrdquosup3⁸which might have been expected if the Southern Kingdom was from its earliestorigins a completely separate entity from the Northern Kingdom but one whichhappened to share in the worship of the same deity For whatever reasonsup3⁹ so far

Contrast in this regard the only other occurrences of the title outside Isaiah in 2Kgs 1922Jer 5029 515 The title ldquoGod of Jacobrdquo occurs at Isa 23 but in my opinion this is in a passage which datesto the exilic period For ldquothe house of Jacobrdquo in verses 5 and 6 see above See Hoslashgenhaven Gott und Volk bei Jesaja 14ndash16 I am well aware of the discussion about the vocalization of the first element in these divinetitles but as it is the name IsraelJacob which is my primary concern here that may be left asidefor the moment For some introductory considerations see Williamson Isaiah 1ndash5 141ndash42 Bycontrast ldquothe Rock of Israelrdquo (3029) probably and ldquothe Light of Israelrdquo (1017) almost certainlycome in passages which are later than Isaiah on the latter see Hugh G MWilliamson ldquoA NewDivine Title in Isaiah 1017rdquo in Open-Mindedness in the Bible and Beyond A Volume of Studies inHonour of Bob Becking ed Marjo C A Korpel and Lester L Grabbe (London TampT Clark 2015)315ndash20 Contra Philip R Davies The Origins of Biblical Israel (New York and London TampT Clark2007) 22 Usually this has been explained as the natural consequence of the fact that a once unitednation divided into two after the death of Solomon For those who find themselves unable his-torically to accept that there ever was such a United Monarchy ndash in terms of contributors to thepresent volume see especially Christian Frevel Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart Kohlhammer 2015)ndash it would presumably be necessary to speculate about some form of common tribal symbiosis


as I am aware we find here the historically unprecedented situation of two na-tions in the ancient Near East sharing in the worship of the same deity The lan-guage of the liturgy reflects this and in my opinion demands a much strongerhistorical explanation than the supposition that the name Israel only came tobe used in Judah after the fall of Samaria⁴⁰ it is difficult to see why that admit-tedly seismic event should have been the trigger for so fundamental a change ofdirection in the religion of a neighbouring country Rather it can only have givenmomentum for some underlying religious usage to be extended into the socialand even political spheres Isaiah for his part was not creating but rather draw-ing on and developing traditions with which he was familiar from his participa-tion in public worship⁴sup1

The extent to which this development in terminology took root can hardly beoverestimated The fact that we have found that so many of the passages that in-clude the names Israel and Jacob with reference to the Southern Kingdom areprobably to be dated after Isaiahrsquos time is already an early indication As wemove into the unquestionably later sections of the book as a whole this becomeseven more pronounced⁴sup2 And of course there are plenty of other books to whichwe might later turn our attention⁴sup3 The view that all this was a completely novelappropriation of the name of one country by another fails to offer any explana-tion as to why anyone should have thought of doing so in the first place Unlessthere was any prior sense in Judah that somehow they had some stake in the

which ante-dated the development of the political monarchy first in the north and then later inthe south The most persuasive proponent of this alternative view is undoubtedly Reinhard G KratzldquoIsrael in the Book of Isaiahrdquo JSOT 31 (2006) 103ndash28 = id ldquoIsrael im Jesajabuchrdquo in Die un-widerstehliche Wahrheit Studien zur alttestamentlichen Prophetie Festschrift fuumlr Arndt Meinholded Ruumldiger Lux and Ernst-Joachim Waschke (Leipzig Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2006)85ndash 103 (reprinted in Reinhard G Kratz Prophetenstudien Kleine Schriften II [Tuumlbingen MohrSiebeck 2011] 160ndash76) This position has been developed even further by eg WolfgangSchuumltte ldquoWie wurde Juda israelitisiertrdquo ZAW 124 (2012) 52ndash72 but unfortunately he gives noattention in his article to the material in Isaiah 1ndash39 I note here the likelihood in view of such divine titles as ldquoGod of Jacobrdquo and ldquoLord of Hostsrdquothat these names may have come to have their close association with the Jerusalem cult fromtheir original attachment to the ark I acknowledge however that this depends on ascribinggreater historical credibility to some of the historical narratives in Samuel and Kings thansome are able to share See eg Kratz ldquoIsrael in the Book of Isaiahrdquo and for a distinctive nuance Gary N Knop-pers ldquoWho or What is Israel in Trito-Isaiahrdquo in Provan and Boda ed Let us Go up to Zion153ndash65 Perhaps I may be allowed to refer for one much later example to Hugh G M WilliamsonIsrael in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1977)


name and all that it signified the fall of Samaria and the probable influx of ref-ugees could hardly have been an adequate cause Isaiah is one of the very fewauthors whose writings have survived who lived through those turbulent deca-des⁴⁴ and our survey has revealed that he was acutely sensitive to the powerfulassociations that names can evoke While the two kingdoms still existed he re-ferred to them primarily under tribal designations supplemented with thenames of their capital cities and he reserved the more evocative names of Israeland Jacob for their wider unity as expressed not by political labels but in the lan-guage of ancient cult and liturgy It was precisely the loss of one of these politicalentities (the other followed later as well of course) that freed him and his suc-cessors to turn more boldly to their application to the survivors initially as thecontinuing kingdom of Judah together with those who survived of the NorthernKingdom either as refugees or as residents elsewhere and eventually to an ex-clusively social cultural and religious community without strict geographicaldefinition at all

For a parallel (and partially overlapping) study to the present one which also includes evi-dence from Isaiahrsquos contemporary Micah see Hugh G MWilliamson ldquoJudah as Israel in Eighth-Century Prophecyrdquo in A God of Faithfulness Essays in Honour of J Gordon McConville on his 60th

Birthday ed Jamie A Grant Alison Lo and Gordon J Wenham (New York and London TampTClark 2011) 81ndash95


Indices

1 General index

Abel-beth-maacah (Tell Abil el-Qamh) 196305 311 329

Abydos 140 143Adad-nerari III 191 203 236 356Adrammelech 218ndash221 260Aguršicirc 103Ahab 98 152 172 216 217 278 284

292 305 307 332 340 355Ahaz 9 12 243 259 271ndash275 279 280

283ndash289 294ndash296 307 336 338339 358 359 379

Ahaziah 216 217 278 282 292 293 305307 315 317 331 332 340

Ahaziahu 314Ahijah 311Ahi-Yau 116Ahzi-Yau 121Akko 189Akzib 189Alara 119 127Ama 106Amaziah 280ndash283 289 306 325Amenirdis I 140 142Ammon 98 321Amon 306Amqarruna (Ekron) 67Amun 140Amurru 60 62 70 77Anatolia 163Anzaria 110Apis 127Apku (Tell Abu Marya) 38Arabia Arabs 42 70 71 85 99 108 109

119 163 352Aram 7 9 259 262 311 356 357 360

387Aramaic 39 57 102 135 314 315 317Aramaean(s) 68 76 87 200 283 289

310 311 314 315 317 321 328 331338 359 360 363 365

Arbela 103archaeology archaeological evidence 1 2

8 11 12 22 24ndash27 30 31 37 41 55

56 81 87 88 94ndash98 147ndash208 235308 310 318 330 348 375

ndash Atlit 96ndash Bethsaida 330ndash Carchemish 322ndash Chinnereth 330ndash Dor 96ndash Jezreel 8 12 197ndash202ndash Megiddo 8 12 190ndash197ndash Samaria 8 12 30 27 28 55 56 81

94 95 147ndash187 235 346 363 375ndash Tell Dan 330ndash Tell el-Fārlsquoah 325ndash Tell el-Ful 26ndash Tell Hadid 204ndash Tell Qudadi 26Arda-Mullissi 220Argob 328Arieh 328Arpad 60 61 64 76ndash78 84 85Arslan Tash 40Aruma 47Arwad 67Arzah 313Arzuhina 108Asa 271 279 283 292 310 311Ashdod 67 129 131 135 137 161 343

390Asherah 217Ashkelon 97 189Ashtarot 328Ashurbanipal 50 52 91 115 148 164Ashurnasirpal II 44 51Ashur Assur Ass ur (city) 38 40 41 43

44 52 67 69 103 104 107 109 111112 119 219

Ashur Assur Ass ur (god) 46 52 5960 62ndash65 78 91 101 102 158 161319 378

Assyria Assyrian(s) passimAsyut 140 142 143Assur-etel-ilani 51Assur-nerari V 324

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-020

Assur-sarru-usur 91Astammaku 65Atalya 43 81Athaliah 289 306 315 332Atlit 96Auširsquo (see also Hoshea) 332Avva 106 107 264Awen 377Azariah 271ndash276 278ndash281 283 285ndash

291 294 295 307 359Azekah 67 68Azri-Yau 58 359

Baʿal 226 295 340Barsquoalu 97 135Barsquoil-gazara 67Baasha 262 271 305 307 310ndash314

318 332ndash334Babylon 5 43 50 91 106ndash108 157 162

233 264 344 349 364Babylonia 42 50 52 75 84 93 97 106

108 116 349 350 353 361Bakanranef 132 133 143Bashan 309Bel 91Ben-Hadad 311 329 356Beth-Awen (see also Bethel) 377 379Bethel 214 218 309 340 341 377 379Beth-Issachar 311Bethsaida (et-Tell) 330Biqa Valley 329Bit-Amukani 106Bit-Bagaia 110Bit-Humria 37 41 42 44ndash49 52 53 69

70 80 81 85 150 165 172 190 315364

Bit-Yakin 108 162 163Book of Chronicles 75 237 246 255 258

259 262 279Book of Deuteronomy 254Book of Ezekiel 239ndash241 344Book of Hosea 1 7 13 369ndash382 385Book of Isaiah 1 7 13 236 259 383ndash

398Book of Jeremiah 238ndash241Book of Kings passimBook of Samuel 227 397

Books of the Prophets 5 7 8 298ldquoBook of the Twelverdquo 374Borsippa 162Bubastis (Per-Bast) 134 141ndash143Byblos 135

Calah rarr see KalhuCarchemish 71 163 322 390Carthage 136cavalry 65 72 78 79 115 196 206 208Chaldean 108chariots chariotry 49 63 65 71ndash75 78

79 85 93 98 103 108 113ndash117 123149 158 162 164 165 191 192 196204ndash206 208 313 355 378

Chinnereth (Tell el-ʻOreimeh) 330Cilician 91Cis-Jordan 328Cutha 107 264Cyprus 43 78Dadi-larim 121

Damascus 7 9 58 60 61 64 7076ndash78 85 87 94 112 134 155 160185 189 236 259 283 296 305327ndash329 348 349 356 358ndash361364 365 385 387 390

Dan (Tell el-Qadi ) 214 218 225 309 311340 341

Darius II 335David 225 226 254 259 284 314Davidic dynasty 243 307 332 333 385Deir ez-Zor 106Delta 12 130ndash138 141 143deportation resettlement 10 12 21 49

53 70 74 93 101ndash124 149 154 165ndash167 185 190 204 235 236 243 264305 329 330 336ndash338 346 350352 364

Der 63 66 68 75 76 108Deuteronomistic HistoryHistorian 9 21

214 230 233 236 237 239 242 243245 255 263 307 308 312 314 316325 332 376 377 378 385

Dimasqa (province see also Damascus)328

Diyarbakır 106

402 1 General index

Dor 96 189Dothan 317Dur-Yakin 162 166Dur-Katlimmu (Tell Sheikh Hamad) 121 122Dur-Ladini 163Dur-Šarruken (Khorsabad) 43 45 46 55

61 63 67 68 70 71 75 78 80 97105 107 112ndash114 117 122 129 165193 204 351

Durdukka 166

Egypt Egyptian(s) 97 99 103 119 127130 131 133ndash144 191 206 218ndash223227 232 234 238 245 247 255 259260 262 285 336 342ndash344 348352 362 365 380 387

ndash 20th Dynasty 135ndash 22nd Dynasty 131 134 136 142 177ndash 23rd Dynasty 141 142ndash 24th Dynasty 143ndash 25th Dynasty 125 129 132 138ndash140

220Ehursaggalkurkurra 52lsquoEin Jezreel 197Ekron 32 63 67 161 186 312Elah 229 241 252 305 312 318 331

335ndash337 341Elam Elamite(s) 50 60 63 66 162 364el-Hiba (Teudjoi) 141Elijah 299Elisha 212 299 321 340Emuq-Assur 108Eni-ilu 190Ephraim Ephraimite 13 154 244 259

298 309 316 323 365 376 377 379381 384ndash389 393 394

er-Rām (al-Ram) 310Esarhaddon 39ndash41 47 48 50ndash52 97

103 118 120 135 148 156 157 162164 186 196

Esarra 111Ethiopia Ethiopian 137 218ndash221 223

260Euphrates 106 262 322 326 357Eusebius 268Exodus 224

Ezekiel (prophet see also Book of Ezekiel)241

Ezida 49 51 52

Fayum 141

Gabbutunu (see also Gibbethon) 67 312Gad 318 319Gaddi 318Gadi 262 318Gadite 318 321Galil 330Galilee Galilean 186 192 196 305 329

330 333 338 341 342 349 360 365Gambulu 163Gath 262Gaza 67 69 75 97 98 134 161 189

205ndash207 252 329 348 357 360Gazru 42Geba (Ǧeba) 310Gemenef-khonsu-bak 130 142Gezer 42 186 189 204 207 277 312Gibbethon 67 311 312 314Gibeah 379Gibil 167Gideon 225Gilboa 309Gilead Gileadite(s) 13 186 196 219

297ndash299 305 309 316ndash319 321327ndash330 333 338 358 365 376

Gozan Guzana (Tell Halaf) 74 93 105ndash107 113 118ndash120 122 263

ldquogrand strategyrdquo 11 87ndash99Greece Greek 6 12 174 175 211 212

214 216 219 227 256 268 274 279291 340

Gur 317

Habor rarr see KhaburHadad-idri 134Halah Ḫalaḫḫu 74 93 105ndash107 113 117

122 263Hamadan 110Hamath (Hama) Hamathean 44 55

58ndash62 64ndash66 69 70 76ndash80 82 8599 106 107 109 111 112 190 264351 364

1 General index 403

Ḫanunu 69 75Ḫarḫar (Tepe Giyan) 107 110Ḫarran 119 120Ḫarratum 350Ḫatarikka 62Hatti 70 83Hayapacirc 69 108 149Hazael 262 311 314 315 319 321 322

356 257Ḫazaqi-Yau 121Hazor (Tell el-Qedaḥ) 186 196 305 329Herakleopolis Herakleopolitan 134 141ndash

142 262Hermopolis 141ndash143Hezekiah 68 94 154 213 229 230 239

240 242 243 245 246 251ndash253 258264 267 271ndash275 279 280 285287ndash289 294 295 337ndash339 345348

ndash accession 243 272 275 279Hezekiahu 239 240 242Ḫinatuna 47Hiram 296Ḫirbet Bel‛ame 317Ḫirimma 350horse(s) 11 62 65 97 98 108 114 119

131 191 192 201 205 206 208Hosea (prophet see also Book of Hosea)

207 258 372Hoshea passimndash accession 154 272 275 280 283 286

287 331 348 349ndash capture 35 52 257 337 344 352 362ndash ldquoevil of Hosheardquo 213ndash218 227 340ndash imprisonment 84 154 229 230 231

234 236 244 248 345 362 364 365ndash vassalage 93 190 246 255ndash257 337

342 345 348 350 353 361Huleh 329 330 333Hulli 324Humbanigaš 60 66Ḫundur Ḫundureans 111Huru 103Huruaṣu 103

Ibadidi 69 108 149Ibleam 316 317 318

Ibu 108Ijon (Tell ed-Dibbin) 196 305 311 329Ilu-birsquodi (see also Yau-birsquodi) 58 69 76

112 351 364Iny 133Iran 40 41 43 129 166 269 296 357Irh ulena 80 112Isaiah (prophet see also Book of Isaiah)

238 383ndash398Israel Israelite(s) passimIsraelite annals 231 232Issachar 311Iti 127Itto-Baal (Tubail) 296Itursquoeans 91Iuput 142 143Iuwelot 140

Jabesh 316 318 323Jacob 13 383ndash385 388 391ndash393 396ndash

398Janoah 196 305 329Jashib (Yāsūf) 316 323Jeconiah 277Jehoahaz 262 286 289 305 307 332

344Jehoash 276 282 289 290Jehoiachin 234 236 237 262 344Jehoiakim 234 237Jehoram 280ndash282 284 292 293 307

314 326 340Jehoshaphat 278 280ndash283 292 293Jehu (prophet) 314Jehu (king) 134 172 276 277 289 293

298 305ndash307 312ndash317 331 332 340356

Jehuids Jehuite dynasty 299 314 316JeninEn Ganin (Ḫirbet Bel‛ame) 317Jeremiah (prophet see also Book of Jere-

miah) 238 241Jeroboam I 272 306 308ndash310 333Jeroboam II 191 213ndash215 217 269 270

272 281 289ndash291 294 298 305307ndash309 311 316 332 356 357 376

Jerusalem Jerusalemite 26 27 53 94134 154 160 185 213 214 243 258259 262 279 307 310 314 315 338

404 1 General index

339 341 348 358ndash360 365 381 383390 392 394 397

Jerusalem temple 283 392Jezebel 340Jezreel 8 12 189ndash202 206ndash208 317Joash 276 277 282 283 289 290 305ndash

307 315 332 356Joram 216 275 276 278 281 292 293

305 314 315 331 332Jordan (river) 189Josephus 36 38 268 352 353Joshua 254Josiah 222 225 277 362Jotham 12 271ndash275 279ndash281 283ndash289

294ndash296 298 339Judah Judean passimJudean annals 231

KalḫuCalah (Nimrud) 37 40 41 43 4951 52 55 66 71 73 98 113 116 117328 335 351 352 378

Kammanu 163Kar-Adad 110Karalla 129Kar-Issar 110Kar-Nabu 107 108Karnak 134Kar-Nergal 110Kar-Sarruken (Tepe Giyan) 107 110Kashta 127 137 140Kasku 81Keblaam 317Kedesh 196 305 329Khabur (Habor) 74 93 106 107 113 121

263Khmunu (Hermopolis) 141 143Khorsabad rarr see Dur-ŠarrukenKis eslu 107 110Kirbet Beit Farr 323Kis essim 107 109ndash111Kullania (Tell Tayinat) 63Kurdistan (Irak) 41Kurdistan (Iran) 129kurʾa 62Kush Kushite(s) 12 93 125 127ndash135

137ndash144 191Kuthah Cutha (Tell Ibrahim) 106

Lachish 27 42 94 185 198 326Lachish reliefs 42Lake Urmia 166Lamintu 141ldquolanguage of conquestrdquo 12 150ndash168 185Latin 6 211 212Lebanon 90 96Leontopolis 142Levant Levantine passimLibya Libyan 12 118ndash122 125 127 131

134ndash136 139ndash144Lilybaeum 136Lisht 141Litani 329ldquoLost Tribes of Israelrdquo 101ndash123Lucian Lucianic 212 214 216 219 220Lucifer of Cagliari 225

Ma (Meshwesh) 139Maccabean revolt 330Magiddu (province see also Megiddo)

190 192 208 328 333Maher-shalal-hash-baz 389Maḫsi-Yau 120Manasseh 225 234 262 283 298 323

358 385Manassites Manassite tribe 23 318Manetho 125 127 132 134 142 143Mansuate 112Marduk 50Mantimeanhe (Montjuemhat) 130Marduk-apla-iddina II (Merodach-baladan)

52 76 108 157Marsimani 69 108 149Marum 47Media(n) Medes 74 106 107 109ndash111

263 346Mediterranean 26 90 96 309Medum 141Megiddo (see also Magidducirc) 8 12 97 98

175 179 186 187 189ndash192 194 196ndash199 201 204ndash208 320

Melidi 164ndash168Meluḫḫa (Kush) 129ndash131 137 138Memphis 103 104 127 131 136 141 142Menahem (Minihini) 12 189 262 264

269ndash272 274ndash280 282 287 289ndash

1 General index 405

291 294 296ndash299 304ndash306 316ndash326 328 329 332 333 341 342 347356ndash358 364 365 376

Menander 352 353Merodach-baladan rarr see Marduk-apla-iddi-

na IIMeshwesh (Ma) 139Mesopotamia Mesopotamian 21 91 156

163 221 234 249 285Metanna 324Micah 225 398Midas 91Mila Mergi 41Minihimme 324Miniḫini (see also Menahem) 332Mitatti 166 167Moab 97 387Montjuemhat 130Mosaic torah 338Moses 253 254Mount Lebanon 90Musasir 43 46Musri 131 134 136ndash138Muski 160 163 167

Nablus 357Nabu 49 51 52 91Nabucirc-mukin-zeri 349Nadab 271 305 311 312Nadbi-Yau 116Nahal Oren 24Naphtali 196 305 311 329Nebuchadnezzar II 27 233 262 344Necho 222 262 362Necho II 344Negev 309Nen-nesut (Herakleopolis) 141ndash143Nesubanebdjed 135New Year (Judean) 268 280 290ndash change of New Year 12 276ndash278Ni 130Niku I 130Nile 104 125 126 131 137ndash139 143Nimlot 141 143Nimmurau 103Nimrud rarr see Kalḫu

Nimshide(s) 304 314 315 317ndash319 323326 332 333

Nineveh 42 43 79 102ndash104 115 116120 191

Nippur 162North African coast 136Northern Kingdom passimNubian 97 98 362

Omri 69 216 217 275 292 293 298299 305ndash307 312ndash314 318 319 321323 332 356

Omride(s) 197 215 216 307 314 315319 332 333 340

Ophel Excavations 288Ophrah 225ldquoOracles Against the Nationsrdquo 387ndash389Orontes 61 63 77 85 112(O)so(rkon) 221Osorkon I 135 136 140Osorkon II 134ndash136 141 142Osorkon III 136 137 140ndash142Osorkon IV 93 137 142 218 261 343

362 365Osorkon of Per-Bast 142

Palestine 22 31 42 67 93 96 98 202310 329 348 359

Palti-Yau 119 120Paqaḫa (see also Pekah) 329 332Parda 167Pedubast 136 142Peftjauawybast 141Pekah (Paqaha) 42 47ndash49 189 231 259

264 267 269ndash276 279 280 283285ndash287 289 290 294ndash299 304ndash307 316 324 327ndash329 331ndash333 338339 341 342 347 349 356 358ndash361365 376 385

Pekahiah 189 269ndash276 279 280 287289 290 294 296ndash199 304ndash306327 329 347 358 365 376

Pentateuch 277Per-Bast (Bubastis) 134 141ndash143Per-Sekhem-kheper-re 141Peshitta 252

406 1 General index

Philistia Philistine(s) 67 99 161 162186 206 252 305 312 314 348 360387

Phoenicia Phoenician(s) 11 38 90 96134ndash136 143

Phrygia 91Piankhy (see also Piye) 93 127 128 139Pimay 136Pirlsquou 131 138Piye (Piankhy) 93 127 128 133 137 139ndash

143 218 362Psamtik I 127Ptah 141Ptolemais Hermiou 140Ptolemy 127Pul(u) 262 324 328 341Putubishti 130

Qal‛at el-Dibse 322Qal‛at Naǧm 322Qarqar 63ndash65 73 77 78 84 85 98

134 154 166 355Qarqūr 63Qindau (Kar-Sin) 110Qiseraya 119Que 38Qurdi-Assur-lamur 90 97

Rabshakeh 91Ramah 310 379Ramoth-Gilead 314Rapa-Yau 121Raphia 137 154 166Rapihu (see also Raphia) 69 166Ras Abu Hamid 312Rashi 214 215Rarsquoši 103Razon 296 298Razyān 360Rersquoe (Raia) 137Rehoboam 134 262 282 309Remaliah 259 297 331Rezin 259 283 349 358ndash360 365Rudamun 141 142

Sabacon (see also Shabaka) 125 132Ša-bare 106

Sais (Sau) 93 136 137 139 141ndash143218 260

Saite ruler 128 132 133 139Samarsquo 116 119 120Samrsquoal 38 163Samaria (Samerina) Samarians passimndash archaeological evidence 8 12 30 27 f

55 f 81 94 95 147ndash187 346 363235 346 363 375

ndash three-year siege 12 93 95 230 233238 242 244 336 345 347 351ndash353

ndash ldquotwo-conquests hypothesisrdquo 10 30 3195 153 155

ndash Yahwistic high priest 223ndash227SamarianEphraimite annals 244 303Šamaš 91Šamaš-bel-ketti 119Šamaš-belu-usur 108Šamaš-mušakšid-ernettiya (gate) 71Samerina (see also Samaria) 30 70 101

165 324 364Samuel (prophet see also Book of Samuel)

226Sanandaj 129Sarepta 96Sargon II passimSarrabanu 185 349 361Satrapie 322Scythians 25Sea of Galilee 329Sebaṣtye (see also Samaria) 346Sebichos 125 132Sehetepib(en)re Pedubast II (Putubishti of

Tanis) 130Sennacherib 39 42 47 50 52 53 68

73 94 106 134 135 147 154 156160ndash162 164 185 186 196 206 220221 235 236 239 240 246 247 252260 294 338 339 348 350

Sepharvaim 106 264Septuagint 6 211 212 223 227 241 252

258 260 261 317Shabaka (Sabacon) 125 127 128 130ndash

133 137 138 143Shabataka (Shebitqo) 125 127ndash133 138

143

1 General index 407

Shallum 271 272 274ndash276 289 290291 294 304ndash306 316ndash319 323325ndash328 332 333 356 357 376

Shalmaneser III 65 73 80 98 134 136203 236 315 355 356

Shalmaneser V passimShapiya 185Shechem 309Shepenwepet I 140 142Shephelah 161Shishak 127 134 262Shoshenq I 127 131 134 135 136 142Shoshenq III 136Shunem (Sulam) 200ldquoSibrsquoerdquo (now Rersquoe) 137Sidon Sidonian 90 135Simri 305Sicircn 77 119ldquosin of Jeroboamrdquo 213ndash215 217 305 308

333 340 341Sicircn-sarru-iskun 52Sinai 99 134Sinu (Tell Siyanu) 67Sippar 106 107 162Solomon 198 284 309 310 332 357

396Solomonic empire 322Soʾ 93 136 137 218ndash221 223 234 255

259ndash261 353 362Southern Kingdom 2 7 9 13 388 395ndash

397Sudan 125 143Sulam (Shunem) 200Sutians 162synchronismsndash Assyrian and Babylonian 270ndash Hezekiah ndash Hoshea 229 230 239 241ndash

243 246 252 253 262 263 272ndash Israel and Judah 241 268 271 274

276 278 279 283 287 318 339 347348

Syria Syrian 42 43 61 317 321 352359 380

Syrian Desert 110Syria-Palestine Syro-Palestine 152 342

343 349 352

Syro-Ephraimite War 2 7 9 173 328 338341 359 360 379 380 385 388

Ṣihucirc 103Ṣihuru 103Simirra 60 61 64 76ndash78 85 90 189Šilkanni 130 131 137 138 143Šinuhtu 80Šuandahul 166 167Šumma-ilani 116

Talsquoanach 186Tabal 324Taharka (Tar(a)cos) 125 127 128 133 135Takeloth II 134 136 262Takeloth III 141 142Tamudi 69 71 108 149Tang-i Var 129 131 132 138Tanis 93 130 131 134ndash136 142 143Tanutamun 127Tappuah (Tell aš-ŠēḫAbū Zarad) 320 322

323 326 357Tapsake Thapsa[cus] 322Tar(a)cos (rarr see also Taharka) 125Tarditu-Assur 108Tarquinia 136Tarsicirc 120Tefnakht 93 127 128 131 133 137 139

141 143 218 260 362Tel Dan 289 314 315 330 331Tel lsquoEin Jezreel 197Tel Hadid 204 207Tel Jezreel 197 198Tell Abil el-Qamh (Abel-beth-maacah) 329Tell Abu Charaz 316Tell Abu Hawam 186Tell Abu Marya (Apku) 38Tell Asharneh 61 62 63 65Tell aš-ŠēḫAbū Zarad (Tappuah) 323 357Tell el-Fār‛ah (Tirzah) 180 183 310 317

320 325Tell el-Ful 26Tell el-Maqlub 316Tell el-MelatTell Malat 312Tell el-ʻOreimeh (Chinnereth) 330Tell el-Qadī (Dan) 311Tell el-Qedaḥ (Hazor) 329Tell en-Nalsquoameh 329

408 1 General index

Tell Halaf (see also Guzana) 105 118Tell Jemmeh 183Tell Keisan 186Tell Muqdam 142Tell Qudadi (Tell esh-Shuna) 26Tel Qedesh 329temple of Karnak 134temple of Kawa 135temple(s) of Yahweh 226Tentamun 135Tepe Giyan (see also Kar-Šarruken Ḫarḫar)

110Tep-ihu 141Teudjoi (el-Hiba) 141Thebaid 140 141Thebes Theban 130 134 139 140 142

143Tibni 292 298 306 313 314 332 333Tiglath-pileser III passimTil-Garimmu 164Tiphsah 320ndash323 325 326 333 357Tirhaka 223 260Tirzah (Tell el-Fār‛ah) 262 310 312ndash314

317ndash323 325ndash327 333 356 357Tjeny (Girga) 140 143trade(rs) 11 26 27 31 96 97 108 135

136 143 191 192 200 205 206 208312 328

Transeuphratene 57Transjordan Transjordanian 297 298

316ndash319 321 328 341 342 349 359360

Trisagion 395Tubail (Itto-Baal) 296Turkey 43 105Turushpa 185TyreTyros Tyrian 38 90 96 97 135 153

185 189 252 296 324 352

Ululayu (see also Shalmaneser V) 36Upper Tigris region 106 205Urartu Urartian 42 43 46 91 158 160

163 185 203

Ursa 158 159Uruk 52Usermaetre 142Us irihiuhurti 119 120Uzziah 286 289ndash291 293ndash296 299 359

Vale of Ayalon 42Valerian 69Via Maris 26 31 93 191 200 207Vulgate 252

Waset 140Wenamun 135

Yaba 39Yahweh YHWH 58 116 120ndash122 213

215 217 224 226 253 254 258ndash261338 340 341

Yahwistic cult 214 225Yahwistic high priest rarr see SamariaYahwistic names 28 58 313 327 332Yahwism 381Yamani 67 129ndash132 137 138 343Yarkon 26Yāsūf (Jashib) 316Yaṭbite 47Yau-birsquodi (see also Ilu-birsquodi) 58 60ndash67

73 74 76ndash80 82 85 86 112Yaudi 359Yau-ga 116Yehud 381Yeno‛am 329Yoqnelsquoam 186Zagros 42 64 97 110 111 166 192 205Zaza 120Zechariah 213 241 269 271 272 274ndash

276 289 291 294 298 304 305 307316 317 356 357 376

Zedekiah 234 249 262 277 282 344Zikirtu 166 167Zimri 298 306 312ndash314 318 321 323

327 332 333

1 General index 409

2 Words

Akkadian3-šuacutemeš 117 378esēru 154 160 185 186 236ḫammārsquou 69

ḫepucirc 82 154 156 164 167 335 350 363ldquokalucircrdquo rarr see 3-šuacutemešnasīku 118

Hebrewרסא ʾsr 154 236 344

ephod 223ndash226יבתתישפחה 294

teraphim 223ndash226ידג־ןב 318 319

דכל lākad 154 233 237 239 346

החנמ minḫāh 222 261 346הכנ 306 320 321הלע ʿālāh 222 233 242 256 261 263

344 345רשק qaeligšaeligr 258 306 338שילש šālicircš 298 327 376

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-021

3 Texts

Hebrew Bible Old TestamentGen 4924 396

Exod 122 277Exod 147 327Exod 154 327Exod 212 5 26 27 294Exod 2314ndash19 277Exod 257 224Exod 284 15 28 224Exod 295 224Exod 309 222Exod 3418ndash26 277Exod 359 27 224Exod 398 21 224Exod 4029 222

Lev 1420 222Lev 231ndash14 277Lev 258ndash9 277Lev 273 326

Num 1311 318

Deut 34 13ndash14 328Deut 1512 13 18 294Deut 161ndash7 277Deut 281 15 254

Josh 1326 310Josh 178 323Josh 1825 310Josh 198 29 36 310Josh 207 330Josh 2132 330Josh 2223 222

Judg 118 252Judg 827 225 226Judg 1319 222Judg 1621 25 344Judg 17ndash18 225 226Judg 175 224

Judg 1814 17 18 20 224Judg 219ndash14 316

1Sam 218 2261Sam 111ndash10 3161Sam 137 3181Sam 1523 2251Sam 1725 2941Sam 239ndash12 2241Sam 245 3181Sam 2522 34 3141Sam 307ndash8 2241Sam 3111 316

2Sam 54 2842Sam 614 2262Sam 1944 2222Sam 2336 318

1Kgs 413 3281Kgs 54 322 3571Kgs 634 3301Kgs 637ndash38 2771Kgs 911 3301Kgs 922 3271Kgs 1028 971Kgs 11ndash14 309 3101Kgs 1126ndash1430 3101Kgs 1129ndash30 3111Kgs 1142 2841Kgs 12ndash2Kgs 17 3061Kgs 1215 3111Kgs 1228ndash30 2181Kgs 142 4 3111Kgs 149 3401Kgs 1410 3141Kgs 1417 3571Kgs 1425 241 2621Kgs 1426 2211Kgs 15 311 313 3331Kgs 15ndash17 3081Kgs 152 279

httpsdoiorg1015159783110566604-022

1Kgs 1511 2831Kgs 1516 3101Kgs 1517 2621Kgs 1519 3111Kgs 1520 311 329 3301Kgs 1521 318 3571Kgs 1525 271 2791Kgs 1527ndash28 306 311 312 3561Kgs 1529 3111Kgs 1532 310 3121Kgs 1533 271 312 318 3571Kgs 16 292 2981Kgs 161ndash4 3141Kgs 166 279 305 318 3571Kgs 168ndash9 279 318 3571Kgs 169ndash10 306 313 3561Kgs 1611 3131Kgs 1612ndash13 312 3141Kgs 1615 292 312 318 3571Kgs 1616 3131Kgs 1617 312 318 3571Kgs 1618 321 3271Kgs 1620 306 3181Kgs 1621 292 3131Kgs 1622 292 3061Kgs 1623 275 292 3181Kgs 1625 216 3401Kgs 1628 293 3051Kgs 1629 2921Kgs 1630 216 3401Kgs 1633 216 3401Kgs 17ndash19 2171Kgs 1829 36 2221Kgs 211 1971Kgs 2121 3141Kgs 2122 3111Kgs 2125 2171Kgs 2237 3051Kgs 2241ndash44 283 2931Kgs 2252ndash54 216 276 293 340

2Kgs 10 212 2292Kgs 117 2922Kgs 118 216 275 292 2932Kgs 31ndash3 276 293 3402Kgs 313ndash14 3402Kgs 320 222

2Kgs 6ndash7 3402Kgs 72 17 19 3272Kgs 8 2922Kgs 812 321 322 3572Kgs 815 3212Kgs 816ndash18 280 281 284 292

2932Kgs 822 24 2922Kgs 825ndash27 281 2932Kgs 828 3152Kgs 9ndash10 293 314 3152Kgs 9ndash14 and 15ndash19 2122Kgs 98 3142Kgs 99 3112Kgs 914 3062Kgs 922 3402Kgs 924ndash27 314 317 327 3312Kgs 10 2892Kgs 109 3062Kgs 1011 3122Kgs 1025 3272Kgs 1026ndash27 3402Kgs 1028ndash31 212 3402Kgs 1032 3172Kgs 1035 3052Kgs 11 2892Kgs 1119 3062Kgs 12 2892Kgs 122 2762Kgs 123 2832Kgs 127 2412Kgs 1218 2622Kgs 1220 3062Kgs 1228ndash32 3402Kgs 131ndash9 and 10ndash13 276 289 3052Kgs 1314ndash21 2122Kgs 141ndash2 276 2902Kgs 141ndash20 2892Kgs 143 2832Kgs 145 3262Kgs 1417 290 291 2942Kgs 1419ndash22 280 281 286 289

3062Kgs 1422ndash29 2892Kgs 1423 290 291 2942Kgs 1425 356 357

414 3 Texts

2Kgs 15 13 283 286 289291 293 299 303304 306ndash308 332333 355

2Kgs 15ndash16 3 47 3412Kgs 15ndash17 3032Kgs 15ndash18 5 12 53 267

269ndash271 273ndash276279 281 282 286288 289 299

2Kgs 151 271 275 279 286290

2Kgs 151ndash7 2892Kgs 152 273 2942Kgs 153 2832Kgs 155 281 2942Kgs 156ndash8 2862Kgs 157 2952Kgs 158 271 275 279 291

3162Kgs 158ndash12 2892Kgs 158ndash31 3762Kgs 159 213 277 3052Kgs 1510 303 306 316 3562Kgs 1512 3172Kgs 1513ndash15 271 275 286

289ndash291 3562Kgs 1514 262 303 3182Kgs 1515 306 318 3562Kgs 1516 303 318 320 321

3572Kgs 1517 272 275 286 290

2912Kgs 1517ndash22 2892Kgs 1517ndash1620 3412Kgs 1518 3052Kgs 1519 264 296 324 325

328 357 3642Kgs 1519ndash20 303 341 3422Kgs 1520 326 358 3642Kgs 1522 306 3272Kgs 1523 271 272 275 286

2902Kgs 1523ndash26 290 2962Kgs 1524 3052Kgs 1525 42 47 48 303 316

318 327 356 376

2Kgs 1527 271 273 275 279286 296 329 339

2Kgs 1527ndash31 290 2962Kgs 1528 3052Kgs 1529 154 190 214 264

305 311 317 328330 337 341 342360 365

2Kgs 1529ndash30 303 3382Kgs 1530 231 272 283 286

287 296 329 331337 339 348 352356 360 361 365

2Kgs 1532 272 273 275 279286 296

2Kgs 1532ndash33 2852Kgs 1532ndash38 2892Kgs 1533 273 288 294ndash296

3392Kgs 1534 283 2862Kgs 1535 2832Kgs 1537 298 328 3602Kgs 16 7 9 212 3592Kgs 161 272 273 279 3392Kgs 162 288 2952Kgs 162bndash4 2832Kgs 163 2832Kgs 165 358ndash360 365 379

3852Kgs 165ndash9 283 338 3482Kgs 166 1542Kgs 167ndash9 341 3422Kgs 167 10 3282Kgs 169 3602Kgs 1610ndash18 2832Kgs 1619ndash20 3362Kgs 17 12 13 75 105 211

212 226 227 235240 243 305

2Kgs 17 and 18 38 52 532Kgs 171 272 275 280 296

339 348 3642Kgs 171ndash2 2632Kgs 171ndash4 2902Kgs 171ndash6 18 20 29 153 213

226 249 335 336347

3 Texts 415

2Kgs 171ndash24 42Kgs 172 213ndash215 217 218

227 234 236 340341

2Kgs 173 233 237 238 242263 342 345 352361 363

2Kgs 173ndash4 12 230ndash232 234237ndash239 258 338

2Kgs 173ndash5 239 262 345 3802Kgs 173ndash6 10 12 37 92

229ndash231 240243ndash245 247ndash249251 255 262337ndash339 342ndash344347 349 351ndash353

2Kgs 174 94 186 218ndash220222 227 261 338352 362 363 365

2Kgs 174ndash5 2332Kgs 174ndash6 3522Kgs 175 93 95 153 233

238 263 345 3632Kgs 175ndash6 12 232 238 239

240 242 244 245345 351

2Kgs 176 154 233 235 237242 263 272 346352 363

2Kgs 177 2122Kgs 177ndash20 292Kgs 177ndash23 2492Kgs 177ndash41 2262Kgs 179 245 249 2522Kgs 1717 223ndash225 2272Kgs 1721ndash23 292Kgs 1724 106 245 263 346

3522Kgs 1724ndash28 3392Kgs 1724ndash41 2262Kgs 1726 27 1132Kgs 1729ndash31 2452Kgs 1731 2202Kgs 18 75 2422Kgs 18ndash20 2892Kgs 181 241 242 272 273

275 279 339 348

2Kgs 181ndash12 42Kgs 184 2522Kgs 187 252 264 338 3392Kgs 188 2522Kgs 189ndash10 10 239ndash242 248

263 272 279 345363

2Kgs 189ndash11 12 18 20 29229ndash231 238 240242ndash244 251337ndash339 346 348

2Kgs 189ndash12 37 231 262 337338 345

2Kgs 1810 154 239ndash241 294304

2Kgs 1810ndash11 2632Kgs 1811 2392Kgs 1812 245 249 2522Kgs 1813 235 239 240 243

252 294 3482Kgs 1813ndash16 338 339 3452Kgs 1813ndash1937 2392Kgs 1814ndash16 2392Kgs 1821 24 2212Kgs 1831ndash32 922Kgs 1834 73 2352Kgs 199 2232Kgs 1922 3962Kgs 1937 2202Kgs 201 2432Kgs 213 2172Kgs 216 223 2832Kgs 2123ndash24 3062Kgs 23 2772Kgs 234 2252Kgs 2324 2252Kgs 2329 222 262 3622Kgs 2333 262 3442Kgs 2334 286 3442Kgs 248 2792Kgs 2412 2342Kgs 2417 286 3442Kgs 251 2412Kgs 257 234 262 3442Kgs 258 2412Kgs 2527 2622Kgs 2527ndash30 344

416 3 Texts

1Chr 56 31Chr 526 3 3411Chr 661 330

2Chr 161 2792Chr 214 3262Chr 26 2862Chr 2621 2942Chr 272 2862Chr 285ndash6 3602Chr 285ndash8 3792Chr 2816ndash21 32Chr 301ndash12 2132Chr 3311 234 2622Chr 366 233 234 2372Chr 369 279

Ezra 236 311

Neh 739 311Neh 1133 310

Esth 16 330

Job 319 294

Pss 201 396Pss 246 396Pss 468 12 396Pss 7122 396Pss 7510 396Pss 767 396Pss 7841 396Pss 812 5 396Pss 849 396Pss 891 396Pss 947 396Pss 1322 5 396Pss 1465 396

Cant 514 330

Isa 1ndash39 383 391 395Isa 11 286 388Isa 13 394Isa 124 396Isa 2ndash4 391

Isa 21 388Isa 21ndash4 391Isa 23 391 396Isa 25 391 396Isa 26 391ndash393 396Isa 51ndash7 394Isa 57 393Isa 519 395Isa 525 383 384Isa 526ndash29 383 384Isa 6 395Isa 6 and 8 392Isa 6ndash9 9Isa 6ndash12 386Isa 6ndash19 391Isa 61 286 388Isa 61ndash11 394Isa 7 3 9 359 385Isa 7ndash8 7Isa 71 286 358 360 365Isa 71ndash9 379Isa 71ndash17 394Isa 72 358 359 365Isa 74 360Isa 75 358 360 365Isa 78 360Isa 78ndash9a 390Isa 717 394Isa 8 393Isa 81ndash4 385 389 393Isa 81ndash8 394Isa 81ndash10 3Isa 85ndash8a 393Isa 811ndash17 394Isa 816ndash17 392Isa 817 391ndash393Isa 818 392Isa 823 3 330Isa 9 387Isa 96 286Isa 97 385 386 391 393Isa 97ndash20 383 384Isa 98 385Isa 911 387Isa 914 384Isa 916 389Isa 918 389

3 Texts 417

Isa 919ndash20 298Isa 920 385 387Isa 104 389Isa 105ndash9 389Isa 106 389Isa 109 3 390Isa 1010ndash12 389Isa 1011 390Isa 1013ndash15 389Isa 1020 391Isa 1021 391Isa 1027ndash32 4Isa 1111ndash12 386Isa 1113ndash14 386 387Isa 1115ndash16 386Isa 13ndash23 387Isa 131 388Isa 133 222Isa 1316 18 321Isa 141 391Isa 144bndash21 4Isa 1428 388Isa 1428ndash32 387Isa 15ndash16 387Isa 17 387Isa 171 387Isa 171ndash3 3 388Isa 172 387Isa 173a 387Isa 174 391 393Isa 174ndash6 388Isa 176 391Isa 181 389Isa 19 387Isa 20 385Isa 201 4Isa 2312 222Isa 24ndash27 388Isa 276 9 391Isa 28ndash31 389Isa 281 389Isa 281ndash4 388Isa 283 389Isa 2922 391Isa 2923 391Isa 302ndash5 221Isa 308 392

Isa 3011 12 25 395Isa 311 395Isa 311ndash2 221Isa 36ndash39 385Isa 361 240Isa 3738 220Isa 381 243Isa 40 383Isa 40ndash48 391Isa 40ndash55 386Isa 4926 396Isa 576 222Isa 586 294Isa 6016 396Isa 663 222

Jer 1412 222Jer 236 286Jer 251 241Jer 281 241Jer 3129 222Jer 321 241Jer 349ndash11 14 16 294Jer 361 9 241Jer 362 277Jer 377ndash8 221Jer 39 241Jer 5029 396Jer 515 396Jer 524 241Jer 5212 241

Ezek 81 241Ezek 1711ndash21 249Ezek 201 241Ezek 2121 224Ezek 241 241Ezek 261 241Ezek 291 17 241Ezek 292ndash7 221Ezek 3020 241Ezek 311 241Ezek 321 17 241Ezek 3321 241

Hos 11 286Hos 12bndash25 207

418 3 Texts

Hos 14ndash5 200Hos 16ndash9 371Hos 21ndash5 371Hos 22 200Hos 213ndash19 371Hos 222ndash25 371Hos 224 200 207Hos 31ndash5 371Hos 34 224Hos 41ndash19 371Hos 51 371Hos 58ndash14 379Hos 63 371Hos 68ndash11 371Hos 71 371Hos 73ndash7 375 376Hos 78ndash11 380Hos 711 221 380Hos 712ndash16 371Hos 81 371Hos 91ndash4 371Hos 93 380Hos 99ndash17 371Hos 910ndash17 376Hos 101ndash8 378Hos 101ndash14 371

Hos 105ndash6 341Hos 105ndash8 377 378Hos 1014 321Hos 111ndash5 376Hos 112ndash5 371Hos 115 11 380Hos 116ndash11 371Hos 121 380Hos 121ndash15 371Hos 122 221Hos 131 3ndash13 15 371Hos 134 371Hos 141 321 371Hos 143ndash6 371Hos 149ndash10 371Hos 712ndash16 371

Amos 1ndash2 389Amos 11 286Amos 113 321Amos 522 222Amos 62 3

Zech 71 241Zech 102 224 225Zech 145 286

Apocrypha1Macc 517 20 55 330 Jdt 155 330

Septuagint and related manuscripts20 3224Kgdms 1429 3054Kgdms 258 241A 220 322Adagger 322AntiocheneAntiochian text 6 211 212

214 261 274 275 305 311 317 323326 338 340

Antiochene mss 19 82 93 and 108 275B 219 220 322Codex A 279Codex Alexandrinus 275Codex B 279Codex V 279Codex Vaticanus 311

GB 296GL 296kaige revision 211 212 216 222 258 261L 219 220 223Ldagger 322La115 (Palimpsestus Vindobonensis) 211

212 214 223 260LaM (also known as La91-95) 212 214 216Lucianic recension 6 212 216 292 357LXXL 296minuscule 52 279minuscule 92 279minuscule 121 279minuscule 106 279minuscule 120 279

3 Texts 419

minuscule 127 274 275 279minuscule 130 279minuscule 134 279minuscule 158 275minuscule 245 274 275minuscule 247 279minuscule 314 279minuscule 489 279minuscule 501 279

minuscule 554 279minuscule 700 275Palimpsestus Vindobonensis rarr see La115

Septuagint (LXX) 6 211 212 216 217222ndash224 227 241 296 322 325 327328 347 357

V 220 275Vetus Latina 6

Classical and Ancient Christian writingsEusebius Chronicon 268Lucifer of Cagliari 225

Sulpicius Severus I Chr 471 219

Dead Sea Scrolls4QXIIc 3714QXIId 371

4QXIIg 371

JosephusAJAnt IX 132 352AJAnt IX 15 38

AJAnt IX 16 38AJAnt IXf 268

Mishnah Talmud and related literatureB Bat 121b 213Giṭ 88a 213

Taʿan 30bndash31a 213

Other Rabbinic worksSeder Olam Rabah 268

Aramaean inscriptionsKAI no 233 l 15 350 ldquoTel Dan Stelerdquo 289 314 315 331

OstracaLachish 27 Samaria 27 96 237

Seals and seal impressionsfrom Egypt 177of Hezekiah 288

of Hoshea 238

420 3 Texts

Ancient Near Eastern texts

Historiographical texts

Assyrian Eponym List and Chronicle 3 437 39 50 57 82ndash84 86 95 154 338348 349 351 352 361

Babylonian Chronicles 3ndash5 10 3036ndash38 60 83 95 152 153 238 240335 349ndash351 363

ndash i 19ndash23 349ndash i 24ndash28 30 37 38 57 82 95 148 167

363ndash i 29ndash31 38 351ndash ii 24ndash25 350Babylonian King List A 36Ptolemaic Canon 36

Assyrian royal inscriptions

Shalmaneser III

ldquoBlack Obeliskrdquo 134 315ndash epigraph (RIMA 3 A010288) 356ldquoCalah Bullsrdquo 315ldquoKurbarsquoil Statuerdquo 315ldquoKurkh Inscriptionrdquo (RIMA 3 A01022) ii

91ndash92 73 355ldquoMarble Slabrdquo 315

Adad-nerari III

ldquoTell al-Rimah Stelerdquo (RIMA 3 A01047)l 8 356

Tiglath-pileser III

ldquo(Calah) Annalsrdquo 40 41 45 47 48 190296 305 357

ndash Ann 3 (RINAP 1 27) 296ndash l 3 41 357ndash Ann 13 (RINAP 1 14) 296ndash l 8 235ndash l 10 41 269 324 357ndash Ann 18 (RINAP 1 22)ndash ll 1primendash8primea 41 47ndash l 3prime 190ndash Ann 23 (RINAP 1 20) 328ndash ll 8primendash9prime 185

ndash Ann 24 (RINAP 1 21)ndash ll 1primendash11prime 41 47ndash l 3prime 190ndash Ann 27 (RINAP 1 32) 296ndash l 2 41 269 357

ldquoIran Stelerdquo (RINAP 1 35) iii 5 41 269296 324 357

ldquoSummary Inscriptionsrdquo (RINAP 1 39ndash52)41 348

ndash Summ 1 (RINAP 1 39) ll 23ndash24 185ndash Summ 4 (RINAP 1 42)ndash l 6prime 190ndash l 11prime 331ndash ll 15primendash19prime 42 48 190 269 324 361ndash Summ 7 (RINAP 1 47)ndash l 23 185ndash rev 7ndash13 349ndash rev 11prime 286ndash Summ 9 (RINAP 1 49) 328 331ndash rev 9ndash11 190 269 349 361ndash Summ 13 (RINAP 1 44) 328 331ndash ll 17primendash18prime 42 269 349 361

Shalmaneser V

ldquoLion weightsrdquo 37

Sargon II

ldquoAnnalsrdquo rarr see ldquoKhorsabad Annalsrdquo

ldquoAshur Charterrdquo 38 43 44 51 60 61 6376 84

ndash ll 16ndash28 59 64 71 150 351

ldquoBorowski Stelerdquo 79ndash side B 5ndash12 80

ldquoBull Inscriptionrdquo 45ndash l 21 81 149 185

ldquoCyprus Stelerdquo 78ndash ll 51ndash65 79

3 Texts 421

ldquoHama Stelerdquo 112

ldquoJuniper Palace Inscriptionrdquo 66ndash68 73ndash ll 7ndash8 66

ldquo(Khorsabad) Annalsrdquo 12 44 67 69 7073ndash76 84 86 108 113 147ndash187 351

ndash ll 10ndash18 70ndash72 95 99 114 149 235335 351

ndash ll 23ndash25 76 114ndash ll 66ndash67 235ndash ll 109ndash115 110ndash ll 120ndash123 108 235ndash ll 210ndash215 110 235ndash ll 380ndash381 235

ldquoKhorsabad Cylinderrdquo 51 68 70 352ndash ll 19ndash20 68f 149 185 235ndash l 25 69

ldquoKhorsabad Display Inscriptionrdquo 45 4976 77 113 129

ndash ll 23ndash25 30 71 75 93 149 157 351352

ndash ll 33ndash36 60 64 65 78 112ndash ll 55ndash57 235ndash ll 64ndash65 110ndash ll 115ndash116 235ndash ll 138ndash139 235

ldquo(Khorsabad) Display Inscription XIVrdquo l 1545 80 129 149 165 166 185

ldquoLetter to the God Assurrdquo (ldquoSargonrsquos EighthCampaignrdquo) 43 44 46 68

ldquoMosul Annalsrdquondash ll 4ndash20 77ndash ll 5 14ndash15 18 60ndash ll 6ndash11 63

ldquoNajafehabad Stelerdquo 64ndash66 76ndash rev 4ndash13 64 f

ldquoNimrud Prismrdquo 72ndash76 86 93 99 364ndash iv 25ndash32 378ndash iv 25ndash41 71 72 149 335 351

ndash iv 31ndash33 49 165 166 185ndash iv 31ndash41 114ndash iv 33ndash34 157 158 165 166ndash iv 37ndash39 185

ldquoNineveh Cylinderrdquo 79

ldquoTang-i Var Inscriptionrdquo 129 131 132 138

ldquoTell Asharneh Stelerdquo 44 61 63 65 66ndash B 1primendash12prime and C 1primendash9prime 62ndash B 11prime 60

ldquoTell Tayinat Stelerdquo 44 63 66 351ndash ll 1primendash10prime 63fndash ll 5primendash7prime 60 77

ldquoThreshold Inscription no 4rdquo ll 31ndash3246 81 149 185 364

Sennacherib

RINAP 3 4 ll 52ndash58 53RINAP 3 22 iii 27bndash49 53RINAP 3 1015 67 68

Esarhaddon

RINAP 4 9 iprime 6primendash17prime 103

Letters and administrative texts

Assur

StAT 2 53 119

Dur-Katlimmu

BATSH 6 37 121BATSH 6 110b 121StCh 1 185 no 14 121

Kalḫu

CTN 3 121 117 378Nimrud Horse Lists 98SAA 19 22 90SAA 19 8ndash11 37

422 3 Texts

Nineveh

ABL 301 91SAA 1 1 91SAA 1 110 98SAA 1 220 164

SAA 1 255 375SAA 6 34 116SAA 15 280 118SAA 16 63 120SAA 20 55 111

Other TextsEgyptian royal inscriptionsndash Osorkon 142ndash Piye 139ndash142

ldquoReport of Wenamunrdquo 135

Baal Cycle 295

3 Texts 423